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Learner Reviews & Feedback for Programming for Everybody (Getting Started with Python) by University of Michigan

4.8
stars
229,642 ratings

About the Course

This course aims to teach everyone the basics of programming computers using Python. We cover the basics of how one constructs a program from a series of simple instructions in Python. The course has no pre-requisites and avoids all but the simplest mathematics. Anyone with moderate computer experience should be able to master the materials in this course. This course will cover Chapters 1-5 of the textbook “Python for Everybody”. Once a student completes this course, they will be ready to take more advanced programming courses. This course covers Python 3....
Highlights
High quality instructor

(1484 Reviews)

Introductory course

(4203 Reviews)

Top reviews

KK

Jun 26, 2020

Great introduction to Python and programming as a whole. Everything is broken down making it easy to understand. Had zero programming experience before and this class made it easy and fun to get into.

DU

Apr 26, 2021

Excellent, although, even without having any programming experience except some Visual Basic at school about ten years ago, in my opinion the course could have bee more difficult and the pace quicker.

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201 - 225 of 10,000 Reviews for Programming for Everybody (Getting Started with Python)

By MD E A K

May 15, 2020

Excellent course for beginners

By RAVIKUMAR I

May 15, 2020

instructor is really awesome

By Selin A

Sep 18, 2020

Dr. Chuck is obviously best

By Pratik U

May 15, 2020

Good teaching methodology

By Anirban M

Jul 5, 2020

A very good course.

By sakshi s k

Oct 30, 2020

very very good

By Songjie G

May 17, 2019

great!

By Marco

Mar 13, 2023

On the plus side:

- Videos are generally short and to the point.

- Quizzes are enjoyable and very very useful to double check your own progress.

- The speaking style of the teacher is, in general, fairly straightforward and never boring.

- Teaching staff answers quickly in the discussion forum.

On the minus side:

- The teacher generally writes over the slides without adding any value to their content (actually creating some confusion).

- He occasionally introduces a new subject with code that includes other subjects (i.e., loop lessons code includes lists, and lists are never fully explained as they're not in the scope of this course) and/or can lead to wrong assumptions (i.e., most of the slides offered for loops include lists in the code, but I found out at the very end that lists are not strictly needed to run loops).

- Sometimes, the exercises imply an extra logical effort and the default code in the autograder can unleash confusion: if on one hand I am a supporter of tricky questions and critical thinking to stimulate and challenge the learning process, I find that this stage should happen once the knowledge has been consolidated and not during early exercises. When plenty of learners call for help in the forum, often about the very same mistake (and the teaching staff answers with nearly copy-paste answers) this calls for a review of the exercise.

- I fail to understand the purpose of the "Office hours" videos, which do not give any Python knowledge.

Nevertheless, I still think this is a solid introductory course for beginners/non-programmers that is worth getting. While I am not a programmer, I can certainly say that I no longer feel a complete idiot!

Thanks a lot, Dr. Chuck!

By Pritesh P

Sep 22, 2015

Excellent overview of first few concepts in Programming in Python. Useful in understanding programming concepts (early early stages) for those who have never done programming and refresher for those who have, but it has been a while, I look forward to seeing how the other courses in the this series are. Only reason I didn't give a 5 star rating is because I think in addition to the given assignments there should be an extra assignment per week with practical applications. Granted not enough of the language is know yet to warrant anything really complex, but perhaps just number converter for scientific notation, or a tip calculator with code given that can make it practical to use (connect it to a website or phone application).

By Ishaan k

Nov 6, 2019

This is a very nice start for python beginners. Professor Charles Severence's way to teaching is very good. This course will help you build a strong foundation in python. I liked the conditional sequences lecture from other lectures. The assignments and quize were so engrossing and tricky which helped me a lot. Moreover the discussion forum is a nice help for fellow students. I would recommend you to take this course. I completed this course in 2 days along with all assignments and quiz submitted. The bonus videos give a nice exposure about successful people and career. I also loved them.

By Harsh K M

May 15, 2020

It's not as updated as python's latest version and it's sort of not possible to keep the teaching material up to date, in online courses, I was using Python 3.8.2 while learning this course and the final problem was always giving me an error telling me that " '>' not supported between instances of 'float' and 'NoneType'"

but the problem didn't show me any error on the autograder. so it's cool! and you are a very great professor, really very interesting content!

By Dmitry R

Jul 25, 2022

Great overview to introduce Python. Good material. Good conceptual examples. Trainer is very knowledgeable. Very clear and informative course.

By Suprita D

Jun 29, 2020

great course, some more examples can be included

By Adarsh T

May 15, 2020

This Course is really very helpful for beginners.

By Tao S

Mar 31, 2020

good course but its more basic than i expected

By Nikhil M

Aug 17, 2018

Nice course to have a clear idea of python

By John S S I

Feb 3, 2016

All of the review I've read were that the course was great, so maybe it is me that was the problem. However, as I would go through the written material, I would try to work the problems given as examples, and when they did not work, I was confused and wondered why the example given to teach us would not work. I asked for help a number of times, providing screen shots of the results I got trying to duplicate what the example was supposed to show, and page numbers of where the example was presented in the course materials. One former student basically said that I should not be trying to duplicate the examples, but just accept the concept they were trying to show. Another did a good job of explaining one of my questions, but then all replies to my question ceased. I decide to drop out of the class and try teaching myself, as I have done on everything I have learned about computers since my 1st computer in 1983. I have been very impressed with other courses given by Coursera members, but this one was not one of them. All of the other submissions praise the course, so maybe it is just me, but none of the other submissions mentioned any actual things the course had done - just that it was great.

By C B

Apr 28, 2021

This is a mixed bag of a course. While the lecturer is good, the assignments are very difficult. Do not be reassured by Dr Severance's comment that you don't need math for this course: you do. Even if it's a small amount for most, math is by far my most difficult subject and thus I was frustrated when there was no instruction for certain mathematical expressions that it seemed we were just expected to know. The moderators in the forum are vague at best but I have seen some extremely rude and patronising comments from them towards those who were struggling like myself and objected to the difficulty and assignment explanations, especially since a few of the assignments are not entirely based on the lectures. It was unclear that some information was not presented in the lectures and that we would have to use the textbook, but even the textbook seemed overly brief and not that helpful for the more difficult work. I did learn a lot, but I can see people getting frustrated with this if they are like myself and have zero background with math/coding.

By Nathan W

Jul 2, 2021

Disappointing. Due to all these good rating, I thought this would be a really good course. My main issue with this course is that it is NOT for beginners. The videos have good production quality and the instructor is quite clear. But when it comes to trying the coding exams, the videos just dont teach you what to do. Also whats with the heavy maths for the coding exams?? Cant you just teach me the princbles of coding, not A level maths. Look somewhere else if you want to learn Python.

By Deleted A

Jan 12, 2022

I understand each slide that the Professor mentioned, however when I tried to do the coding by myself, I had a hard time since the questions are in a paragraph, and writing the codes is a lot different compared with reading codes. Is it possible to dividing the coding assignments into several smaller sessions, which are ranked from the easiest to the hardest? This will help student have clear concepts. Thanks

By Nicola W

Jan 2, 2022

I felt like this course could benefit from more examples and course work. It would have been nice to have the professor explain a concept, then we have a few small homeworks after each. The pace of the course seemed off as well, it was very easy ands low for the first 3 weeks however from week4-7 it was warp speed. That being said, I really did love the professor, he was fun, engaging and passionate.

By Chris L

Feb 4, 2018

Videos are rambling at points. Also, the code assignments are 1 and done per week. This means they don't nicely build upon one another and that they can be pretty unforgiving if you aren't ready to spit out the culmination of the week's lecturers in 1 go. The course would be better with more focused lecturers and multiple short code assignments that build on one another.

By Jake A

Apr 12, 2023

The course is ok, but the jupitor notebook for practice is very sloppy and wasteful and cumbersome.The course couldve done way better with questions, exercises and practice that was cleaner and way more simple and helped you memorize things. Drilling the simple aspects of what you were learning wouldve made the course way better.

By Syed T H R

Sep 11, 2021

It is a good course but the assignments are not explained in a very good manner. The programming assignments tend to get difficult due to the questions asked which are not well explained and they are a lot difficult to execute. Teaching is good but the exercises should be explained much further.

By Tushar K

Jul 21, 2017

I feel that course should be split out for people with programming background and the first time Python programmers versus the first time programmers. There was too much repetition in some of the classes around basics of programming than python. Thanks!