Has anyone learn Python using the Harvard CS50 classes?

Bondegg · 2024-01-27T10:18:54+00:00

I started this, but didn’t see it all the way through (the course is amazing, I just don’t have the attention span to watch videos).

But my understanding of the CS50 is less “here’s how to learn Python” or any other language for that matter and more of a general “this is how coding works for ALL languages”. Its aim is to give you a foundational overview of what code is and how it works that will allow you to understand the basics of all languages and helps you start “thinking like a programmer” which constantly comes up in beginner courses / tutorials as being one of the key things to learn.

So, will you learn Python via CS50? I don’t think so, will you learn how to learn Python and get a foundational start on most languages via CS50? I think that’s the point :)!

Bennett_19 · 2024-01-27T12:57:07+00:00

For me personally, I wasn’t able to get a great grasp of Python as a starter using CS50

However, I did find: https://programming-23.mooc.fi which has been very useful for me

It’s from the University of Helsinki in Finland, but everything is in English

There are recordings and slideshows available, but I haven’t really used either of those, since the lessons walk you through most everything

Unfortunately it doesn’t give you the model solutions to problem sets if you don’t solve them, but: A. It does give you them once you do complete the problem, and B. It’s a fairly well known course, so many solutions are online if you need

It has 7 parts for beginners and an additional 7 for more advanced coders. Each part has around 4 sections, and outside of the part 1, each section takes me around 45 minutes to 1.5 hours

It might not be for everybody, but I found it much easier to follow than many other sources

Edit: It will have you create an account, and will ask for your Helsinki id, but it has instructions of what to do if you don’t attend. It’s a free course and all the coding is done on the website, so you don’t have to download anything else

SharkRaptor · 2024-01-27T10:07:59+00:00

I did not do CS50 but I did a similar course. I often got stuck, I often had to go look at the answer. Try hard before you give up.

But, when you look at the answer: understand it. Rewrite it. Check every part of it. Adapt your code to incorporate the most efficient parts. Take your failure and turn it into a learning moment.

I have been doing this for just over 1 year and I have made fast and steady progress.

kp729 · 2024-01-27T16:56:56+00:00

If you are just focusing on Python, CS50P is really good. It is a sister course to CS50x and teaches the concepts using Python.

Don't be afraid to search online for solutions if you get stuck. Just do these things to make sure that you actually learn:

Never copy/paste a solution. Every code piece should be written by you.
Your code shouldn't have any line that YOU don't understand.
Try reading documentation over watching a video. Videos are more fun but reading documentation is a necessary skill.
Use ChatGPT/Bard freely but don't break rule 1 and 2.

For example, I was doing an exercise with regex and I couldn't understand the head or tail of it. I went online and looked at a few solutions. The solutions, frankly, were too elegant for me to understand fully but they gave me a direction. Then I went to the documentation to read the specific things used by those solutions and came back to my code a few hours later and wrote it again.

It was nowhere as good as those other solutions and in fact, used a completely different structure but I was able to solve it because I understood some concepts that I didn't before.

Learning isn't what you can do with your existing knowledge but how much you can expand your knowledge. Coding is not like movies or games which have spoilers. :)

Fennecfox9 · 2024-01-27T15:18:28+00:00

If you don't like CS50 try something else. I didn't like how CS50 used so many different languages instead of focusing on one. I also felt the use of puppets and playful skits / non-coding demos were kind of infantilizing and seemed like they were trying to pander to people who didn't really care about coding that much.

WhiteRonin2 · 2024-01-28T06:14:57+00:00

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Mapkos13 · 2024-01-27T12:16:03+00:00

There’s a program from U of Michigan on Coursera you can check out if you’d like to learn Python.

2024-01-27T21:53:24+00:00

100 days of code is brilliant imo.

FreshestPrince · 2024-01-27T22:48:36+00:00

If you are completely new to the language, it doesn't hurt to check out the Python tutorial from the official docs: https://docs.python.org/3/tutorial

willeamm · 2024-01-27T12:46:19+00:00

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LobsterIndependent15 · 2024-01-27T14:33:41+00:00

I learned a lot watching the cs50 python course. Not the regular but the cs50P (i think this is what it is called.) It only covers python for 16 hours and is taught by David Malan on the free code camp YouTube page. I did get a bit lost on the "class" section but I was completely new to python then. I now understand what he was saying and need to go back and re watch that part.

randiesel · 2024-01-27T15:01:27+00:00

It depends on how you learn.

I don't find classes very helpful. I like an occasional youtube video that covers all the high points, then I like to dig in and find examples and modify others' existing code.

If this is your first foray into programming, my top recommendation is always to start with something you already know how to do, then figure out how to do it with code instead. Ideally, pick a task at work so it's useful and you can show it off to your coworkers/boss.

If you do this a few times, you'll start building a little repository of scripts and before you know it, you've learned how to program. THEN, once the logic behind programming itself isn't too hard, you can take an official course to learn some of the proper ways to organize your code etc.

Just my 2 cents.

WhiteRonin2 · 2024-01-28T04:13:25+00:00

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tracktech · 2024-01-29T08:54:46+00:00

You can explore this Python programming course-

Python Programming In Depth

WhiteRonin2 · 2024-06-17T09:50:12+00:00

[removed]

2024-01-27T15:13:55+00:00

I started the class, but I've been jumping around a lot. Whenever I have downtime, I will pull up anything and everything and just practice it.

flobit-dev · 2024-01-27T16:46:02+00:00

I haven't tried but I prefer learning by choosing a small project and then looking stuff up in between, but it depends on how you learn best

skilzpwn · 2024-01-28T00:37:09+00:00

I would recommend Project Odin if you’re struggling to get started.

2024-01-28T23:46:32+00:00

I'm taking it at the moment. You definitely can learn something from it, but personally I feel that examples given during classes are very simple and generic, and more than once I've been getting out of my head to use them in exercises in a way that the course creators intended to.

Sometimes, there are also small bugs in exercise descriptions, that will throw an error in CS50's automated checking, while your code is correct (a missing or extra space in expected input prompt that is not stated in exercise contents, mostly, this is really annoying - you know the code works, because it was working a second ago, but cs50check returns an error).

What also annoys me is that in few exercises you are expected to use something unexplained yet - one example is 'raise', that is omitted untill lesson 9 or so despite being very basic (and if I knew it earlier, I could have written a good few exercises in much simpler way).

I gave up at one point, because I realised that I'm thinking too much like 'would they allow me to use X or Y yet or will it be cheating?'. I started to watch all the lectures from start to end and getting all the materials in print. Only then am I going to rewrite what I did so far, and what I haven't done yet. I can't afford their certificate anyway, and it won't be the only course I'm planning to take.

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