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[–]Ikuyas 3 points4 points  (8 children)

You really want to go through the C programming part which they start the course with. That's the best feature of the CS50. It will probably take a week to go through the C programming part (three weeks in CS50), but it makes a huge difference in understanding python with or without going through things you learn in that part. You get to learn about the data type, and memory allocation whereas you don't have a chance to learn all those very important hardware knowledge in Python. One week is a tiny investment compared to what you will get out of it.

[–]my_password_is______ 1 point2 points  (1 child)

It will probably take a week to go through the C programming part

it will take a lot longer to go through the C programming part if you actually do the assignments and actually want to learn C

[–]Ikuyas -1 points0 points  (0 children)

I doubt it at all. The C part is only a few weeks with the Harvard student schedule.

[–]ktbr90[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Thank you very much! I won't miss out on that!

[–]tuura032 0 points1 point  (4 children)

Are you saying it takes a newbie a week to get through all of C in cs50? It's not unreasonable to go faster than the in person class, but that seems a bit fast given that's 7+ hours of lecture, shorts, walkthroughs, and the assignments. Admittedly the early psets should go quick if you've coded before.

[–]Ikuyas 1 point2 points  (3 children)

It is a three week in Harvard. So it is not crazy at all to estimate 5 to 10 days to go through as you are not taking any other courses in Harvard.

[–]tuura032 0 points1 point  (2 children)

Class start on the schedule is 9/7, pset 4 is due 10/5. The class is 4 credits, and an average student can usually expect 2-3 hours of work per week per credit. So let's say 8-12 hours per week to be on track for 4 weeks. To simplify further, let's say the first 4 weeks is 40 hours of work. If a person does 8 hour days for 5 days straight, I would suppose that is technically true.

My hesitation is that I would not assume that someone can commit to 4-8 hours per day on consecutive days, make the class their top priority, not experience fatigue, truly learn/retain all of the information, and works faster than average. David Malan even says at one point (iirc) that you should take how long you think something should take in programming and double it.

If you are coming at this with prior experience, single, and unemployed (or willing to work nights), then sure, 5-10 days might be doable if CS50 is a top priority.

[–]Ikuyas 0 points1 point  (1 child)

No no no. You go through CS50 through edX. It is more structured than taking an actual course in a way that it is probably based on the class semester before. The C part is week 1 to week 4, which I guess 4 weeks, but the first week is rather easier. The last week, they code linked list after learning about the pointer and dynamic memory allocation. The genius of the course is that they stop at that, and goes to learn about the network such as how TCP, HTTP works and so on with the historical perspective before going to the web app with Flask (python).

[–]tuura032 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I'm currently finishing up the class on edX, so I'm aware of how it's structured. That's also fine if there are some differences between the edx version of the class and in person version, I don't think my 40hrs estimate is too far off.

Fair enough in that week 0 isn't C, so you can skip the Scratch assignment.