CS50, Harvard’s Largest Class Expands Its Line Up of Courses | Hacker News Reader

CS50, Harvard’s Largest Class Expands Its Line Up of Courses

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102 pointscarlosgg15 comments

I've taken CS50 a while ago and I think it is a phenomenal introduction to CS/programming.

Starting off with a toy language, Scratch, to six weeks of C, followed by two full web projects (Python/JS). The instructors find a wonderful balance between theoretical concepts (compilers, binary, Big-O) and practical applications in different domains: a bit of crypto, a project about finance, usage of APIs, ...

The course is wonderful in showing what is out there and contrasts with beginner courses that hit people with a year of data structures & algorithms (e.g. MITx's 6.001x - also good but less "real world").

Recommending the course is my go to answer for the question "how can I learn to program?"

Scratch was amazing - someone I know is taking the class today, and it was so cool to build a game where a wizard moves up and down the screen and shoots lightning at a knight in pimp armor in 10 minutes. It feels like everyone would love programming if they got introduced how basic it is at the core, which scratch does.

Humans are very visual are able to think in terms of blocks very naturally. Scratch is definitely a much nicer showcase of programming to beginners compared to C

CS50 was, and this is not hyperbole, life-changing for me. I took it during my last quarter of grad school, and a year and a half later left my old career to become a software developer.

As soon as I finished CS50, I took another MOOC. That second MOOC was so boring that, had it been my introduction to programming, I am sure I would have dismissed programming as something that I have no interest in.

I lucked out and took what is likely the best intro to computer programming out there.

what other moocs did you take? How did you learn and train yourself to a software dev position?

I'm five years out of graduating university with a B.S. in Sociology. At some point in that time I realized my love for CS and design-thinking. I decided to try and make a career change. Last month I completed CS50 and should be receiving my certificate soon. I'm also now looking at degree/cert programs to continue my education.

The amount that one can learn from this course is incredible and it really sets you up to continue learning. I also just started the intro to game development today.

If you don't mind me asking which site did you enroll in these courses, I am extremely interested in these.

EDx

Word from the wise - those certificates are pieces of paper that nobody in your future job search will ever ask or care about.

It's "a word to the wise". Now you are just calling yourself wise...

furthermore I don't agree a certification is useless for someone trying to get into development/design thinking from sociology. It's a lot better than nothing.

I wish I had originally started learning how to program from cs50 instead of FreeCodeCamp. I feel I would be much further than I am currently. Really, thank you for the links. I'm excited to check out what the other courses have to offer.

I really love free code camp, but I had watched all of CS50 a year before and found it to be incredibly useful context. I didn't feel the need to dig in and do the exercises but just to take the time to understand what the CS people might have been talking about.

I think I unintentionally have spoken negatively about FCC. It really it can be a really good foot hold into Web Dev. Maybe it was just me but I had a lot of disconnects while going through some of the material and solving programming challenges, while useful, felt cumbersome after a while. I was also pretty lost most of the time.

> I took a quick look at one the courses, and it seems the lectures are not taught by David Malan, but people in his team.

I think this is important to keep in mind. I watched all of CS50 and then moved on to the React Native course and the quality of the lectures was not the same. They were still informative but for anyone ready to dive into these know the experience will not be the same.

How much has the content been dumbed down over the years? Seems like 2015-2016 is the best "vintage" in recent times.

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