I have recently completed the fundamentals and concepts levels and achieved the Concepts Badge.

I really admire the way the Fundamentals course is designed to focus more on practical knowledge, rather than just some theoretical information, with the concept of job submissions using Zowe CLI to determine the completion of a level. This is an exciting approach and completely different from typical online courses that judge students based on an end-quiz. My enthusiasm to complete the tasks smoothly increased throughout each level, and there wasn't a minute when I felt bored. The mid-session breaks that I took to keep myself sane made me more eager to find out what kind of task I will be facing next. Due to the detailed step-by-step documentation and prior programming experience, I completed all the Fundamental tasks without much difficulty.

The Concepts course is a complete theoretical activity, unlike Fundamentals. In this course, the levels are subtle but detailed descriptions and explanations of important IBM Z concepts and topics. The concepts are described in the best way possible using real-life examples, and each level is followed by a simple quiz based on what is explained in the level.

Before I started the courses, I received a spoiler that Fundamentals may take more time than Concepts, which made me wonder how a level takes lesser time to be completed than its predecessor. Post-completion, I realized that both Fundamentals and Concepts courses combine the basics of IBM Z but are divided based on how they teach the topics, so the theoretical Concepts took lesser time than the practical Fundamentals. Both are equally informative and engaging, and I liked working on the Fundamentals course more due to the involvement of hands-on working experience in REXX, COBOL, Python, and JCL.

I am eagerly looking forward to starting and working on the Advanced course.

Thank you!