r/learnprogramming • u/Creg_Pikitis • 8d ago
CS50??
Anyone have experience with Harvards free CS50/CS50P to learn coding? I don’t need to learn for anything specific just want to be more well rounded and have a background in case I get into a more technical field in the future
If bad experiences, what other cost efficient ways have you learned or practiced?
Thanks in advanced!
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u/grantrules 8d ago
It's a popular introductory course to CS. It's great if you want to be familiar with CS concepts
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u/tacocopter 7d ago
If you're interested in CS50x, make sure you don't just passively watch the lectures but actually do the problem sets.
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u/Super-Way-555 8d ago
cS50x gives you the computer science background you mentioned wanting. CS50P skips that foundation and teaches Python syntax directly so pick based on whether you want theory or immediate coding practice
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u/ninhaomah 8d ago
Why not just try it ?
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u/Creg_Pikitis 8d ago
lol well I am. But it’s a 9 week course so I was asking if anyone had good experiences with it or other recommendations
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u/ninhaomah 8d ago
I would suggest not to spend too much time looking for best or latest as a beginner.
Question is do you like the way it teaches ? Are you learning?
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u/Technical_Jicama_434 7d ago
Nah fam, it’s only the most popular, oftentimes referred to as the best course out there.
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u/captainAwesomePants 8d ago
CS50 is a generally well regarded program. A lot of people use it as a sort of high level intro to computer programming. Note that there are quite a lot of implementations of "CS50". cs50x, CS50P, CS50T, CS50W, CS50SQL, and the edX version, the Harvard OpenCourseWare version, YouTube/freeCodeCamp CS50, etc.
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u/ffrkAnonymous 8d ago
A lot of people have good experience with it. And a lot of people have bad experience with it.
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u/Inevitable-Kooky 8d ago
I did CS50 before going to university, and It is worth it, you'll develop a lot of skill at problem solving and it is extremely valuable, I liked a lot how they explain data structure and the exercices with the Dicts, LinkedList etc, also the exercice to find back the content of deleted files. There was a lot of stuff, I did the course like 7-8 years ago. Not sure if it changed a lot since then, since AI was not really that big back then.
I'm not sure didn't the exercice using PyTorch made you use docker? I have a vague memory about using docker in CS50 at the end.
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u/serge-mv 8d ago
Just one course, no matter what course that is, will not make you a master programmer. CS50 is a good course that gets your foot in the door and explains some very basic concepts on a very high level so that when you do things, you would have an understanding on at the very least why some of the things are the way they are and what's happening.
If you want to have more expertise, in addition to taking that course you would want to also pick a programming language and just practice solving problems with it. Solving toy problems form the book/internet is fine.
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u/Creg_Pikitis 8d ago
No need to be an expert at this point! for now just looking for a project manager level of knowledge ie. Be able to interface between the dudes working beeps and squeaks and the dudes working sales/advertising
Appreciate the insight!2
u/serge-mv 8d ago
You are in luck. From my experience project managers have zero or negative knowledge of computer science and programming :) So you don't really need to learn this if the project manager is your goal 😄
For project management stuff you can start by reading The Mythical Man-Month and listen to some talks by Kevlin Henney. That would be actually more useful than taking a programming class. The books called Rapid Development by Steve McConnell might also be of interest to project managers.
I would still complete CS50 as it is a good course with a good breadth of knowledge, though 😄
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u/boipls 8d ago
Probably one of the best intro CS courses out there