Hard

I'm new to Python and to programming in general. I found this course to be very difficult and not at all meant for beginners. I only passed because of blog posts and Github notes. The lectures were okay but definitely feels very rushed. More examples and practice exercises would have helped me understand better. The quizzes are way too complex, I failed most of them multiple times. I liked Jennifer's videos and I felt like I could follow what she's saying. As for Paul, though? I kind of felt like he's a robot. He talks too fast and I could barely follow. I hoped that this course would teach in a way that would be fun and understandable for those with no background in programming. I thought I would be eased into it but it felt like I was dropped off in the middle of a jungle with no clue what to do. This course would have been great for those with a good programming background and a solid foundation, but not for beginners. I learned a few things, though. And I'm still thankful for the team behind this course for their hard work.

There are issues with this course. My biggest gripe is that if you do not pass the tests on your first try, the questions and answers will change on your second time around. Obviously this is fine for the questions that you got wrong however it also changes the ones you got right. This makes the tests take MUCH longer than necessary and there isn't necessarily any extra learning gained from this.

However, even with the problems with this course, you WILL learn how to use Python. I feel that the course succeeded in that regard - but I'm not sure that this course provides any benefits over following some YouTube tutorials.

In conclusion, if you would like to learn how to use Python and don't mind something that is challenging and time consuming, take this course.

I just finished Lesson 1 and I have already found some issues:

They said that if you divide 2 int you will always get a float number... That is incorrect because it depends on your Python's version.

Ex: Python 2.7.13 (default, Jan 19 2017, 14:48:08)

[GCC 6.3.0 20170118] on linux2

>>> 8 / 7

1

EXAM Questions

What is the value of x after this statement x = 12 / 3.

I answered 4 and the system considered my answer wrong. I presume the correct answer was x=4

What is the value after executing this round(45.342).

I answered 45.0 and again, the system considered it wrong. (This is really unacceptable that the system is unaware that 45 == 45.0)

I will give this course the benefit of the doubt and keep going on with my next lesson.

Largely uses less efficient, outdated, and counter-intuitive code to teach Python. If I had someone who learned Python from this course added to my team it would take months to correct the bad behavior they learned here.

Very rushed, incomplete examples and gaps in content. I'm not sure what audience Coursera is aiming for, but it doesn't seem to be anyone who doesn't already know a programming language.

The course should include more examples and tasks for students. Also all the question areas in quiz'es and tests should be covered by the open lectures. Felt like incomplete course.

It complicates things that are supposed to be simple and explainable.

Material presented is good for beginners but the courses are boring.

To many quizes per video and too much Teory

I could not get my course certificate

Очень непонятные задания.

It is a course advertised as for beginners in programming, but there is a lot of information that is not explained in the written theory or in the videos, so it is necessary to learn these concepts outside the course (Youtube, programming forums, etc.)

The tests are excessively long, it can take between one and two hours to do a test. The questions never indicate the correct solution or why the answers marked as incorrect are so. The questions are very long, ambiguous and difficult to understand what is being asked. Passing a test is often more a matter of trying answers or luck, and you leave the lessons without having learned practically anything and without being able to correct your doubts or mistakes. You are expected to write your questions in the forum, instead of improving the contents of the explanations, the theory and the practice.

The practice consists of 3 projects throughout the course, in which you are given half the code (without explaining how it works) and you are asked to complete a series of functions without knowing very well what you are doing or what the purpose is.

After finishing the course, you are not even able to program basic programming by yourself, and you are left more confused than at the beginning. Not recommended for beginners at all.

The video tutorial test questions focus in on details irrelevant to programming which can cause a beginner programmer to totally lose focus on coding, and instead become discouraged by their strength in mathematics. Spend more time on exploring the basics of Python, and less time giving users trouble over petty mathematical discrepancies during the interactive potion of the video tutorials.. or at least offer greater detail in righting an incorrect response. This shakes the confidence of beginner users and makes them feel like programming is beyond their ability and understanding, just because they cannot rearrange a math question in the desired order, when at the end of the day, Python can solve the expression regardless as to whether the user enter multiplication or division first!

outdated ,

video lectures are from 8 years ago , which is like a century in terms of programming.

although the material maybe useful , most of the programming exercises deal with an IDLE that is in 2012 so features are different than IDLE in 2020 . I don't want to spend most of my time trying to figure how they did something in 2012.

Horrible course. Too difficult for begginers. Not enough practice before programming assignments. Teacher do not prepare you for this. They just throwing you in to the water and watch whether you could swim or you will drown.

10/10 would program again

bad