This course is very close to being excellent in many respects, but it has some very serious issues that make it a frustrating experience. The production quality is very good and the course includes some material that most Python courses completely overlook. In particular, I am very impressed that the course dedicates a week to talking about different programming paradigms.

Here are the issues. The single greatest problem I have is the speed at which very technical and complex aspects of Python get introduced. You'll have a 3-4 minute video that gives one or two quickly glossed over examples of something without any serious explanation and then the video will conclude with "and now you know how X works." If any of this is even remotely new to you, you'll have points where the course glosses over crucial information without providing you serious explanations about how and why something is done a certain way. You won't progress easily by just rewatching the videos over and over because they don't tell you very much. It's also a serious flaw of the course that really important information just gets dumped into the readings for the course when a lot of that material deserves to be in video form. When you get stuck, the suggestion is to just go and read more elsewhere, but there's a point at which this gets ridiculous--the course itself should be suffient to learn the material.

Second, I think the programming exercises are overcomplicated and needlessly so. I never felt prepared for what I was tackling in these exercises because they often involved doing things that were more complicated than any of the examples given in any of the videos. There's a difficulty gap here, and I think it's a serious flaw of the course. The exercises are also pretty long, and usually involve writing lots of functions based on pseudocode directions that are ambiguous enough that you may very well misinterpret what is expected of you, do a bunch of unnecessary work, and then have to redo it all once you realize that you mistook what the intended problem was. This is so frustrating. It feels like you lose a lot of time and it doesn't really help you learn anything.

Third, when you get stuck because you can't figure out how to do something that wasn't explained very clearly, you'll inevitably turn to the forum. But the forum for every exercise is filled with people posting the answers. Most of these posts have been up for weeks or months, and nobody maintaining the course seems to care. Once you've seen any of these posts (which are unavoidable), it feels like the challenge of the exercise is wasted and it's no longer a serious learning opportunity. I'm personally pretty torn by this. If you aren't prepared to do the exercise because the material wasn't sufficient for you to understand what you are doing, it seems like it's the course designer's fault that you are stuck and you can't get any meaningful feedback. It sort of pushes people to just go looking for the answers to the exercises to figure out why they are stuck. It may still be a valuable learning experience if the learner really tries to understand and does adequate research, but the easy path of just copying and pasting things from the course forum will probably undermine the effectiveness of the exercises for most people. When was the last time anyone you knew in school learned anything in a class when they had access to the answer key the whole time? Again, the exercises can be designed better so that people aren't steered into the direction of just looking for the answers.

Finally, I think there are noticeable errors in the videos. The forums are filled with people pointing them out. One noticeable one was the palindrome example in the video. The code in the video doesn't actually check if the word is a palindrome because it doesn't iterate through the whole string. It simply just checks the first and last characters. The problem is that it is presented as if it is a solution to a problem and it's just not. This kind of stuff is really annoying to anyone who has programmed before, but it's seriously confusing to new programmers and people will waste tons of time trying to figure out what is going on.

You can make this course a lot better. Fix the mistakes and provide more video content with worked out examples. You can even make it optional content. Doing this would very much fill in the gap between the videos and the exercises.

i was thinking of giving it 2 stars at least, as this course does cover a wide variety of topics. However, there are so many mistakes here. idk how its so highly rated, maybe people just watch the videos without trying the code out for themselves. Because a lot of information/code shown is just plain wrong.

Don't enroll in this course if your primary objective is to learn python as there are many far better python introductory courses out there. However, if you already know basic python, this course is a great way of getting introduced to new and advanced concepts (enumeration, map, filter, tests etc).

All in all, i'm disappointed as the previous course (introduction to back end development) was quite good

The assignments in this course were not well matched to the content. Many of the coding assignments required knowledge of commands that were not taught until later in the course, or in some cases not taught at all. For example an assignment in week 2 required a list reversal, but reversals were not taught until week 3. In week 1, there was a list datatype with a nested dictionary datatype that required a specific syntax to loop into that was not covered by any of the lessons.

this course is great for covering many aspects of python, but it requires more study form other resources as well. the lab was a little challenging. overall it was great experience.

This course was too advance for beginner. i'm very tech savy and fast learner but i can't fully understand the concept

DISCLAIMER: Rating from the point of view of someone on the Database Engineer Certificate.

Where to begin with this? If I were taking this course as part of the Developer certificate I would have given it a higher punctuation, but coming from the Database Engineering one it is a complete mess. You can tell the course was designed for developers and then added to the other certificate.

Most of the content is focused on development, and there is very little information regarding Python for data. Also, the explanations were lacking. It gives a lot of good insight into paradigms and other theoretical concepts behind Python, but when it comes to the code itself it gives very little to no explanation of them. You will need to find yourself other sources of information for that. Also, the lab assignments are too difficult most of the times expecting you to know things from outside the course.

If you are a complete beginner in Python you'll be lost most of the time, this is definitely not beginner-friendly. I am just glad I finished it so I can move on to different topics and hopefully learn Python somewhere else.

This course is a necessary evil to obtain the certificate, this is the only reason I can think of recommending someone to take it.

This course is good well detailed and elaborate, the labs are challenging but worth the hard-work put into it for success. I recommend it for anyone who needs to learn python programming.

very badly explained, NOT for beginners

The very basics of Python and programming are covered in this course, but it lacks any in-depth explanation regarding core concepts and Python specific features. There's not much info in this course about what goes on "under the hood" and that can leave you wanting for more and better explanation. I had to buy a Python book to really get some of these concepts, and that's okay, but I think people looking to take this course should know that there are some serious gaps here and this course alone won't really prepare you to build anything on your own.

For $50 a month, I would have expected this course to be more detailed and at least offer some kind of guidance in the discussion forums for those seeking help to complete the assignments, but unfortunately there is no support in the discussion forums, but there are plenty of 'learners' giving away answers to assignments, which I don't think should be tolerated.

What I do like about the course is that its a great roadmap for self-taught programmers regarding what they need to learn about Python and in what order, and the instruction provided here can serve as a nice starting point provided you're want a simple and broad overview of a particular subject.

It was a great Python course that covers the main topics all coders and engineers need, now it will be up to us to continue our learning journey. The instructors did a great effort in preparing this course, the sample codes and assignments were really helpful to ensure correct understanding and eliminating doubts about concepts. Finally, I would like to thank the instructors, Coursera and Meta for such a great learning experience.

This is a wonderful course, made with soul. This is a wonderful story in simple words about complex topics. Huge thanks to the amazing creators and Meta Corporation. I am a refugee from Ukraine studying to find a job and this course has been a huge support for me and my family during a difficult time after russia's dastardly attack on Ukraine.

Thanks Meta for a very comprehensive course.

Not only are fundamental computer science topics taught, but the job-ready skills needed for Python by covering it in breadth, but also depth.

Please fix your website Coursera

Awful.

One of the best courses I have ever learned on Coursera. Really, it is a well-prepared course, and the instructor has the ability to explain concepts in simple words briefly and confidently.  The unique feature of this course I am very interested in is the summary after each video and also the external links introduced at the end of each week. I highly recommend studying this course and other courses in this specialization.

So far I've felt like all of the Meta courses have had good pacing and thorough explanations. However, unlike the other courses I felt like this programming course in particular had less hand holding and more psuedo code in the instructions that required you to do more critical thinking to complete the assingnments which is definitely more effective in ensuring that you're learning.

The course is just well laid out, with concepts broken down into smaller chunks for easier understanding. This is by far the best programming course i have ever taken.

Very good and concise course explaining the fundamentals of Python, software development workflow and paradigms.

I would love more practice assignments.

Thoroughly enjoyed this course. It had a good mix of challenging programming assignments and I feel like I learned a lot about python

Good course to start Python or for intermediate Python that want a refresh presented in an interactive and easy way.

The course for the most part was great. I don't think it was for a beginner, but if you are patient and willing to fill in the gaps with other sources then it will work for you. If you have prior programming experience then you shouldn't have any issues.

My only beef with the course really was there were probably 5 or 6 questions throughout the course in quizzes that were flat out wrong. I mean like not even up to interpretation where they went contrary to the python documentation or data definitions by companies like Oracle. I think (hope) they were just mistakes. I went out of my way to bring them to their attention, but never heard any response.

When it happens to you, just figure out what they want by looking at the feedback, but verify what you think it should be with authoritative sources so that you do not engrain bad info Python thought patterns.

Poor explanation, given info doesn't match the labs and quizzes, not for beginners etc. Do not recommend.

Honestly this course is a very good tool for learning or refreshing your knowledge in Python. Compared to the Google courses, this course is more intense as well as more hands on in many ways. I found Google's courses were good, but more fluff. Here there is very little fluff, which is a good thing when doing these online courses. It means though that you have to pay attention and NOT skip any videos!

My only warning before going into this course, is that the coding labs will challenge you. Not to say that they are hard, but if you do not have a coding background, I can see them being challenging. As from reading in the comments, individuals didn't know what to do. For myself, I thought they were straight forward, but I have been in the industry for 2 years now so this was more of a brush up.

I fully recommend this course though and it makes me excited to see what is in the other courses Meta is releasing.

Instruction, instructor, and lessons are all incredibly useful. This course is challenging, but it truly builds a solid foundation both for learning the basics of python, and real-world use and application of the language. I thoroughly enjoyed the challenge--and it can get challenging--and I know feel more confident and emboldened to continue my journey as a back end developer!

It's a good course for building the foundation in python programming. Though all the basic things are touched but they are not as comprehensive as need to be. This course will put you in the track and show the path to walk on. Also the lab assignments are helpful to strengthen your basics.