Похожие ощущения возникли, особенно в сравнении с
Programming Languages by Dan Grossman
Ссылка на схожую претензию и комментарии по теме от автора курса.
Основная мысль:
The intro material was intentionally designed to provide background material to make up for the fact that there are no prereqs that can be depended upon (see Part 3 of the Course Overview for a discussion of this). We'll get into the «meat» of the course starting with next week's video on an Overview of Patterns from Section 2.
. This is ultimately a class about software design (with a heavy dose of programming examples to «reify» the design discussions). If you're interested in learning about design then I think you'll learn a lot.