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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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251 - 275 of 445 Reviews for Biology Meets Programming: Bioinformatics for Beginners

By Carolina G

•

Nov 16, 2023

It becomes quite challenging at the end for someone with no previous experience in coding (I, myself, could not complete the last code challenge - perhaps with more experience I could come back and get it done). Nevertheless, the information you take away from the course is excellent!

By mohammad m n

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Nov 1, 2020

a really great way for leaning what bioinformatics is but for me, who is a bachelors in computer science, the biology parts of it were a bit hard to understand, and the programming parts were a bit boring, especially when I had to copy-paste my codes every time for the next step

By Rafael N

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Oct 22, 2020

The course is not really for beginners. As a molecular biologist and chemist with little programming experience, I had to do crash course in Python 3 programming. In contrast, there's a lot of study resources made available. People from the comments section were very helpful.

By Yangjiexue L

•

Oct 6, 2020

I enjoyed this course and it is really helpful for me.

But I have to say this is NOT for programming beginners. If you are a programmer with no biology background, you probably will be fine. But if you are a biologist with no programming background, big chance you'll be lost.

By sarvanshi s s

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Apr 21, 2020

Course is well defined and stepik tool is very good and useful. But sometimes it becomes a bit confusing to understand and there is no option to find the fault in code or correct answer. After a particular number of efforts, there must be option for correct solution.

By Jonathan N

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Jan 14, 2018

Very interesting course, but its estimated time is about 17 h 20min. I took about 53h and am an absolute beginner in this, so this took a lot longer than I thought it would. I think the estimated time should be revised up to take programming beginners into account.

By Michael G

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Oct 12, 2017

The Stepik textbook needs to be updated. The quantity of test cases and the quality leave a lot to be determined. The format of input on the quizzes needs to be specified more clearly. Otherwise a great course but I would not market it towards beginners.

By Stuart W

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Jun 14, 2020

I enjoyed this course a lot. It was very challenging. I am an experienced Python programmer so the programming side was pretty straightforward however the exercises took a lot of determination to complete. I can definetely say that I learnt something.

By Jefo H G

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Sep 26, 2021

Overall it's a good foundation course for those who haven't known Bioinformatics before. But it could be better if some concepts can be more detailed explained, and some tests' complexity could be more progressively increased.

By Ken V

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Jul 13, 2018

overall, it's a good course. But it has many places to improve. It's better if you have the biological and programming background, or you gonna struggle. And some tricky and sometimes misleading parts can cost you a long time.

By Priyanka K

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Sep 11, 2022

It was a very informative and good course but definately not for the beginners. If one donot have prior experience in python programming then it would take more time and efforts. Overall nice course to attempt and experience.

By Surur K

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Jan 11, 2021

Coding questions should require a larger breakdown of the solution you intend to get for the datasets. I come from a cs background however I can see how otherwise, students will struggle immensely in this course

By Florencia M

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Nov 9, 2020

This is a very challenging course which taught me plenty but failed to explain some statistical thing with precision. Though, I really recommend it, but I would also advise people to lean some Python in advance

By srinidi v

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May 27, 2020

Its a really interesting course.. Being from a computer and math background with interest in biology, this was a great inspiration. The tool helped me work and understand a lot. Its surely good for a beginner!

By Nielay S

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Apr 19, 2020

It was a very informative course!! but some technical and biological terms were hard to understand. It would've been much better if more detailed explanation was provided regarding the coding and the terms.

By Sujithra S

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Oct 27, 2022

This is beginners course, which will be a good launchpad for any one starting off. You need some basic programming knowledge and basic idea on biology. I would recommend this course for the beginners.

By Veronica Y

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Apr 8, 2020

It was challenging, but I learned a lot of tricks while coding. It will be useful if you teach how to install Python (Anaconda Spyder or Jupiter)

It took me more than 4 hours to complete all the tasks

By Muhammad A N

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Aug 8, 2023

For any absolute beginner, things will not be streamlined. I was lucky to have the knowledge of programming, biology and bionformatics that helped me a lot, completing the course in less than week

By Ivan L

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Mar 21, 2018

A good course that gives an introduction to bioinformatics by applying programming in python. Overall, some of the challenges became difficult towards the end, but I definitely learned something.

By Jane D

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Jan 26, 2018

It was a challenging course but the support was good for the most part. There were some that I struggled a lot with and had to ask external help, but as a whole, the community was super helpful.

By Elias S

•

Aug 26, 2019

Had a lot of fun doing this =)

Despite the fact that the images in the stepik.parts havnt been loaded at some times and the quizes kept annoying, when my computed answer should´ve been wrong :/

By Deleted A

•

Dec 21, 2021

This course covers very interesting subjects in bioinformatics but you need to be familiar whit basic python programming. I think further explanation and educatory contents are necessary, too.

By Laura L

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Jan 31, 2017

Really liked the course and love the topic, however the algorithms section was very difficult and could use some more in depth explaining. Without that, I would not quantify it as "beginner".

By Marek B

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May 18, 2017

It's quite hard to complete this course without any knowledge of Python. I don't recommend it as introduction to programming. BUT as a course about bioinformatics it's great!

By Patrick V E

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Jun 6, 2020

In general a very good course. The problem is actually more that one is doing the programming too "mechanistically" by copy-pasting rather than having to think for one-self.