Computing in Python I: Fundamentals and Procedural Programming

I have programmed - without taking any course - in Python 2.x more than 10 years ago (and I forgot most of it). I am interested in data science and was looking for a Python course as a first step up. I was also looking at an introductory programming course suitable for my kids; Python is perfect for that.

I have followed all 4 "Computing in Python"- courses, and I feel ready now to take on more advanced Python courses or books.

Each course is divided in 4 chapters, each chapter ends with an "exam", the course ends with a final exam. Each course took about a week to complete (+- 3 hours/evening and 2 full days in the weekend (+- 8 hours per day). (I had to hurry, the courses were about to get archived.). The programming exercises and debugging take most of the time and are at the same time the most valuable to grok everything.
There is a SmartBook that is provided as a PDF. Next time I would read the PDF instead of viewing the video's, that would have been faster.

The teaching is well structured and the programming problems are fun to make: they are quite basic at the beginning and get more challenging afterwards. You will make so many exercises that programming in Python really becomes an automation and the exercises never become boring.

I have advised my kids (they are almost or around 20 year) to take the courses.
I recommend the courses.

I had lots of questions or there were errors that occurred while I was going through the lessons and during the practice tests. But there is no support at all. No way to ask questions and actually get a response. The discussion board posting was completely useless since no one ever responds to your questions. I fill out the surveys but nothing is ever done to address the problems or answer my questions even though I provided my contact info as requested. In the activities and on the practice test you are asked to perform tasks that were never taught in the video or in the book. For example how to calculate square root in python, manipulating/calculating date/time formats by importing the math module or datetime module, switching numbers between binary and decimal form, etc. I had to end up googling how to solve some of the problems and even the solutions I found were way more complicated than anything that was taught. How do you expect someone to solve a problem when you haven't covered the necessary elements for them to successfully do so. You cant get to C if the directions there were never covered during A or B.

Outstanding introduction to Python. About 6 or 7 years ago I completed the MIT Intro to Computing using Python, but in the intervening years my skill set has gotten quite rusty and Python 3 has displaced Python 2, so I'm audited this course as a refresher before exploring programming and computer science more generally. It took about 4 days to get through this first unit in the GT sequence and now I am going to work my way, pr'ly more slowly, through the remaining three.

As compared to the MIT version, ca. 2014, this course is more inviting, that one is more inspiring. This course welcomes learners without the math background that the MIT version assumes rather casually. Fluency in calculus and comfort with a mathematical approach to problem solving is part of the DNA of all MIT courses. That said, this course is in no way watered down or lacking in rigor. Its origins lie in the introductory Computer Science course at Georgia Tech, which is, after all, one of the country's leading computer science schools.

I agree with many others that, overall, the course does a wonderful job of outlining the theory of programming from the bottom up in a concise, clear and detailed way, which absolutely suits my learning style. However, where I quickly became frustrated was in some of the practice problems and test problems towards the end of the course, the user is asked to solve problems that (I felt) were way beyond the level of difficulty taught in the course (for example, somehow knowing how to change a date format from 12 hours to 24 hours to determine determine a due date, convert integers to binary and back again, etc.)

I'm all for taking concepts taught and applying them to novel situations - this is how you learn; however, it should be clear which concepts are needing to be applied (at least early on). It is also frustrating that, with the coding problems toward the end of the course, they remove the "sample answers," drop down so you can't even compare your solution to others, or at least get the answer if you're stumped and need to move on. There is absolutely no support if you are stuck on a problem, you have to consult Google/Reddit (which is often unhelpful at best, unkind at worst).

I believe this program is a good jumping off point, but I am reluctant to pay the $150 due to the lack of academic support.

Given Prof. David Joyner’s effort to develop novel methodologies for online learning, it didn't come as a surprise the high quality of this introductory course. If you have no background in computer science and would like a smooth start, I highly recommend this course for the following reasons:

1) The theory is explained in simple terms, and you have the aid of Prof. David Joyner’s SmartBook to assess your knowledge and further clarify your questions;

2) An introduction to Python is also provided, which means that you will not only be learning theory, but also putting it into practice with some real case problems;

3) The course is design to ensure that the basics are learned so that you can solve more difficult problems at a later stage of the course. When you successfully submit a correct answer to the most difficult problems, you will be satisfied and assured that you are on the right course.

4) Prof. David Joyner does a fantastic job motivating the students throughout the course, making 100% clear that it is normal to feel overwhelmed by some topics, especially if everything is new to you!

5) The course is for free unless you choose the Professional Certification route.

I am eagerly awaiting to attend part ll of the course!

This is probably the most accessible introductory programming course for absolute beginners. At the same time, it's not too easy or watered-down like many other online courses. It covers the topics in great details, has lots of practice exercises and programming assignments, and also has a freely accessible book (optional). Highly recommended if you are new to programming.
The course is the first one of a four-course sequence, so it doesn't cover a lot of ground. But it does cover the topics with enough depth for an introductory programming course.
David Joyner is a terrific instructor. The videos are short, to-the-point, and almost all video sections are followed by review text materials, quizzes, and programming exercises. There are smart-book exercises at the end of each chapter and graded exercises at the end of most chapters. There are also extra course practice problems, a practice exam, and a timed final exam at the end of the course. The programming exercises can be done online. The course uses an external tool where you write and run your code and then the score is automatically recorded in edX. You can also install Python 3 on your computer, write the codes locally, and then submit your code to the external tool.
The only issue I had with this course is that all these different types of materials and exercises can seem a bit too much at first. But in the end, I think the abundance of practice materials are extremely helpful for learning and remembering the course content.
Again, if you are new to programming, start with this course without looking further.

My goal with this course was to gain some basic programming skills in Python. This course has an academic bottom-up approach, lots of theory. I used external resources such as Head First Python, Learn Python the Hard Way, and Crash Course in Python, all of these offer more useful study aids (flash cards to help memorize truth tables, as one example). They also offer more practical problems which I found to be more useful for grasping the concepts, and being able to apply them in a meaningful way.
There are typographical and grammatical structure errors in some of the online problems, this made it more frustrating as a beginner. Some of the problems are also poorly explained. Over all this course was very simple, I learned quite a bit more through the external resources and the time spent on other sites, even reading the Python documentation instead of relying on the SmartBook.
The format of the SmartBook only allows viewing a page or two at a time, instead of being able to review previous material or scan ahead to get an idea about how the concepts are being applied through the course.

I took this course as a school student as a way to educate myself further and to start developing experience and knowledge on the field of computing and programming.

And I must admit that the class did a truly great job at explaining more then the basic principles of this, while additionally also making me try them out in practice.

The system the course operates on is also very intelligently made, and it is absolutely no problem to use all the applications on your browser. The problems are well written and test you on right on threshold where you can't just repeat what was explained. It also uses videos in addition to plain text to explain everything, which makes it much more engaging and easier to understand.

The time given by the course is fair and not too little. I managed to complete it well within time.

All in all it was a great experience and I'm looking forward to Part II.

This is truly a course that is beyond coding. It makes me think that Python is more than just a tool. It is also a science. I appreciate it more than just a computer language.

I like how the content of this course is presented. Yes, they are very detailed but, as I learn each of the detail, I am adding more tools in my toolbox. I can really see that taking this course has a positive impact on my learning. I have NOT imagined to get an A in this course. I never thought to even finish the final text in less than two hours. That is how huge of a positive impact this course is to my learning.

The professor's personal input about his experience also helped in affirming that I can really learn Python. The course has even an extra material about Carol Dweck's growth mindset. I can really see how much effort the designers of this course exerted.

To people like me with absolutely no experience in programming/ computer science etc, this course is amazing.

Clear, concise and useful analogies are made throughout the course, and these are lifesavers for us beginners.

Yes there's a lot of theory to start with, and overall I would say there's more theory than hands on practice, but using my following example, how can you build a car BY YOURSELF without even knowing what each piece does? You could probably get away with just following some robotic instructions for piecing together that car, but if you were asked to build a car again, would you be able to do it on your own? If you were asked to piece together a similar car with small differences, would you be able to apply what you've learn before?

This is what I think the best part of this course is, it creates a solid solid foundation of knowledge that you could later easily apply later to other areas of computing as well as further developing your Python skills.

I am extremely grateful for instructor David Joyner's work, and would like to say a massive thank you to him and everyone else in the team of creating this great MOOC.

This was my first course in any coding language ever. From this course I have propelled myself to understanding python basics in a way that I couldn't do before. The way that the lessons are structured gives you a very in depth understanding of how the basic operators and functions work with in the idle and shell. Enough so that I have already start a few projects on my own using the fundamentals.

The only critiques I could say would be that some lessons could be combined to shorten some of the video time and give a little more time for practicing . Also some of the questions towards the end of the course are worded in such a way sometimes that you really must pay attention to the clues that are given. Some of the methods used in those question as well don't feel like they have been given enough explanation in the lesson before the task is assigned.

Over all the difficulty of something is usually what drives me and this course pushed me to think and understand a brand new skill, in only a few months with no real prior knowledge of the subject.

I am a super beginner at coding. This made me want to pull my hair out at times, but like boolean logic puzzles, keeping at it paid off. I have no real coding support network to fall back on, but I figured things out eventually, occasionally searching the web for answers on specific tasks, such as how to turn a single digit number into a double digit by adding zeros in front. Downloading the book and running it through an application to add a table of contents to the book was really helpful. I tried a couple of different methods of answering the online book questions, but ultimately ran through the EdX content for each chapter, then went through the online book to answer the questions.
I did find one error in the course's code for a problem midway, which caused my code to fail on every submission, and I also found a mistake in my code that generated a false "success" on submission (I found my error when I hand copied my code into a paper notebook, which I use to build a kinetic memory of the content.
I audited this course, so many of the chapter evaluation problems were not available to me, but though I would have valued them, not so much for $99.
Overall- really liked the course. The presentation of material (esp the videos) was invaluable for an introduction to Python. The platform hosting the online problems works really well, with the ability to run your code and change the values right in the platform is great.