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Back to Biology Meets Programming: Bioinformatics for Beginners

Learner Reviews & Feedback for Biology Meets Programming: Bioinformatics for Beginners by University of California San Diego

4.2
stars
1,485 ratings

About the Course

Are you interested in learning how to program (in Python) within a scientific setting? This course will cover algorithms for solving various biological problems along with a handful of programming challenges helping you implement these algorithms in Python. It offers a gently-paced introduction to our Bioinformatics Specialization (https://www.coursera.org/specializations/bioinformatics), preparing learners to take the first course in the Specialization, "Finding Hidden Messages in DNA" (https://www.coursera.org/learn/dna-analysis). Each of the four weeks in the course will consist of two required components. First, an interactive textbook provides Python programming challenges that arise from real biological problems. If you haven't programmed in Python before, not to worry! We provide "Just-in-Time" exercises from the Codecademy Python track (https://www.codecademy.com/learn/python). And each page in our interactive textbook has its own discussion forum, where you can interact with other learners. Second, each week will culminate in a summary quiz. Lecture videos are also provided that accompany the material, but these videos are optional....

Top reviews

HD

Apr 17, 2016

I give this course 5 star because I did Bioinformatics I and I totally enjoy it.

This is where programming can be fun, and practical, and you'll learn some basic biology too.

What's not to love?

HL

Aug 15, 2017

I learned a lot from this difficult and time-consuming course! It covers biological concepts using Python. It made learning Python more interesting for me, since I have always loved biology.

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201 - 225 of 445 Reviews for Biology Meets Programming: Bioinformatics for Beginners

By JOSE C D S F

Apr 11, 2017

It's amazing course

By Ashitha K S

May 6, 2020

Awesome course ..

By Amy

Nov 1, 2017

very useful class!

By Sophiezz

Jul 12, 2021

Excellent course!

By Dhiraj S

Jun 11, 2020

It was excellent

By Achala S K

Feb 8, 2019

it was enjoyable

By 马少华

Jul 2, 2023

perfect course

By 稀饭煮天下

Sep 16, 2023

Good course!!

By Igor O

Dec 29, 2018

Great course.

By David T

Mar 5, 2018

So remarkable

By Yan T H

Jun 10, 2017

Nice course

By ShaikJasmine

Jan 31, 2022

thank you

By yeet

Mar 29, 2016

Awesome!

By Dao M C

Oct 24, 2022

Great!

By Rohak S

May 12, 2021

Amaz0ng

By Prathipati P

Sep 26, 2020

Awesome

By Ibrahim H E E

Mar 11, 2021

nicee

By Shunkai X

Dec 12, 2016

Funny

By Roberto R

Oct 20, 2016

cool

By DNA-AND-NAD

Jul 9, 2016

很好

By Markella M

Jul 19, 2019

When it comes to the subject and the learning outcomes, I would rate 5/5. However the methods and the exercises would rate quite lower. Often it's really hard to understand what is wrong with your submissions and the hints given are minimal, so it's not uncommon to be stuck in an exercise for hours not knowing what you're doing wrong. It might be an entry level course but the material is quite demanding if you don't have a programming background. It was the second time I attempted it, the first one was a couple of years ago and I gave up after the first week. This is why I would say that the time required for the completion of this course is wildly understated. Other than that, as a biology graduate I found the skills learned during this course precious. I got hold of some basic Python commands, learned how to implement them to answer questions of biological nature and started thinking a little bit like a programmer. If you have the time and the patience, I would recommend this course.

By Filipe M d M

Dec 30, 2019

It's a great course, but as some people pointed out, it's not the most friendly towards beginners. Ate the end of the fourth week the course tells how to install python and to download pycharm. In my opinion these should have been done on the first week. A good tool for code editing make things so much easier that the student can focus more on the code and on the subject matter than trying to find where the got their code wrong. I read a lot of comments in the comment section of people not knowing what they got wrong only to find out that a piece of code was wrongly indented or that they were missing a colon.

Nevertheless, this couser taught me a lot of interesting stuffs. The way we slowly build our methods, solving problems in small steps, and actualy being able to see it being applied to real Dna string like the E_coli genome and the DosR. I thorougly enjoyed this course i'll certainly be back for the specialized ones.

By Ellen G

Aug 1, 2017

This was an extremely challenging and time-consuming course for me, a non-programmer, non-biologist health care IT professional. My only negative criticism is that for absolute beginners, the estimated time for most exercises is very very very low. Exercises that were estimated at 39 minutes sometimes took me 8 hours of actual labor.

However! Our course instructor, Niema Moshiri was wonderful - very responsive, very patient, and excellent at coaching students without giving away the answers. I learned to read the assignment, then go directly to the comments, reading all of them, and taking especial note of the "instructor replied" answers. I had a good correspondence with a learner for a while - really helped morale and let me feel connected to the community.

And wow! did I learn a lot about the necessity for computational techniques in bioinformatics, and loads about Python programming!

By nikhil k

Jul 17, 2017

Finally at the end of completing a really tough course.. especially for a non programmer and non statistician .But the point is if i can do so can you..!! At times the course really gets tough and at certain times you can breeze through .! it takes tremendous time and patience to get through it.. The staff especially Mr Neima Moshiri is really helpful. My suggestion for those who want to get through with the course should atleast have some knowledge of python and statistics . Data structures and algorithms.. i had to find my way around quite a lot..!! Just a note while trying to learn python i finished completing codeacademy and sololearn python certification just to finish this course...and stiff feel like a noob in python.. !!!

By Beatriz S M

Aug 11, 2022

It's very interesting and informative. I enjoyed learning more about Dna Replication and recall some aspects of python programming.

Although this course claims that you don't need to know how to program, I recommend that you get at least a little more confortable with programming in general before starting this course. It becomes easier that way.

For the authors of this course: I suggest switching the platform Stepik for another one. Stepik is very flawed regarding execution of codes. This leads to a very stressfull and demotivating learning of python.

Overall, this course is pretty good and fun if you would like to expand your knowledge!