This course gives a great foundation for understanding how to synthesize and read basic Python code and functions. It sets you up for learning how to work with data in the following course. I am a GIS student currently in a Geocomputation class with a massive learning curve of experience with coding/compsci, GIS, web development and so forth. Going into geocomp with this foundation was a lifesaver and the only reason I can follow along in class. Charles Severance explains things in a way that even complete novices (me) can understand. The worked exercises videos were a great help when I got stuck. I've referenced these videos for my class multiple times. I find it valuable that the skills I've learned are so transferable.

Python is not my first programming language, so for me this course was mostly about learning Python syntax and semantics, getting prepared for the next courses in the same Python specialization (working with data structures, etc). I really enjoyed the course, especially the way Dr. Chuck explains the attitude you should approach programming with; it's also nice that the lectures have a bit of personal touch, not only the dry material, but also interesting interviews, videos of office hours, introduction of the university of Michigan, fun moments and other: it all makes you feel you are present in the classroom with the lecturer. Overall, very happy with my first Coursera course and can't wait to proceed to the next one!

I finished this course faster than expected with no prior knowledge about programming and I recommend it for anybody who wants to start with programming as it is very well structured with many helpful videos and step-by-step instructions on how to start programming in Python 3.0 and quickly understand the fundamentals of coding.Tip1: Buy the papercopy of the book too and read there all the extra bits as it will come really helpful later (for quick search just use the free pdf of the same book).Tip2: Write down in your text editor all the codes and try to run-test every example to faster understand how things work and don´t be afraid to ask for help as it will just speed up the learning process.Totally recommend! :)

Learning the basics of programming computers using Python has been fun in the past few weeks. Though I wasn't completely new to Python and programming as such, it was an exciting experience being though the nitty-gritty details that make the knowledge stronger.

Charles Russell Severance (Ph.D.) of the prestigious University of Michigan made brought it down as low as it could get in order to build a firm foundation in programming.

I will recommend this course to anyone who needs to dive into programming and contemplating where to start from. 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.

For those who all are thinking of how and where to start learning Python, this is the right place. This introductory course is excellent course. I hope i need not say that a course don't become excellent on its own it need people to make it excellent and Prof. Charles and his team have indeed done an excellent job.

I wish to continue learning with Prof. Charles and am looking forward for the advance my learning of Python and if possible other programming languages.

This is the best time to be alive for those who want to continously learn and advance in life, thanks to platform like Coursera and the people involved in their mission to bring this vast amount to knowledge to the general public at large.

Thank you

This course is a well-introduced course for all ages and professions. With the modern world expanding and discoveries made every day, its important that people understand some form of computer science or programming. The teacher, Charles Severance, stresses this point as this course is ONLY centered toward future programmers or rather as common people and professions from astronauts to bankers through a variety of puns, jokes, and fun music. Overall, this course is very helpful and impactful, as the instruction is very thorough and simple with LITTLE AMOUNTS OF TIME REQUIRED. By the end of this course, one with completely no background with programming should be sufficient in creating his or her own program.

I started Coursera with a course in AI and Machine learning only to find out that I was in way over my head. realizing I needed some basic programming skills, I headed over to this course knowing that Python is one of the most use languages right now in programming. As a non-programmer/software engineer-type, this has been an amazing course. Dr. Chuck breaks things down for the average person so you can start understanding how things are done but also WHY they are done (which is more important in the beginning IMO). I'm now walking through the entire section (6 courses) with the end goal to make it back to that AI and Machine learning course and understand it far better. Thanks, Coursera! (and Dr Chuck!)

Really an exceptional course. Instructor did a great job, and by taking good notes I managed to complete every assignment on my own, without help - which is unusual for online courses. The automated graded system is accurate but brutally exact, so be careful when submitting because something as simple as an extra space in one of the responses is enough to trigger an error (but fortunately usually very easy to fix). Another perk is that for people coming from a background in R, like myself, the latest version of Python - 3 - is closer to R than previous versions in terms of syntax, so it's a pretty easy transition. For everybody else this is a great starting point. Highly recommend this course!

This course is very useful and astonishing for people who are starting or want to start programming on Python. It contains basic information and does not require any knowledge about programming. So, classes are brilliant for beginners! Furthermore, Dr. Chuck is a significant teacher and his lectures are able to inspire almost anybody. Additional materials inside the course are interesting and give listener an opportunity to think about programming in general, about an essential role of programming in modern age of technology. Exercises are exciting and helpful. I am strongly recommending this course for everybody who wants to get started with programming or just get new useful skills.

First Time A Programming Course is This Interesting!

Most of my previous tries to learn Python have hit a dead end as at some point, I lost interest. I felt that the previous courses I had taken before were talking to someone behind me. In some cases, the course was too easy. It left no room to think. Some times, the courses were too hard. As in, the instructor teach something very easy and expect you to do something 10x hard.

This course was of the right pace. Dr. Charles Severance gives you all the tools you need. I felt like riding the "Python bike". I fell, yes, but knew what to do to do better next try. Thanks a lot to the course! Will definitely continue with the rest of the modules. . .

This course was presented in a very interesting way, some of the basic concepts were discussed in various depth.The instructor is very good at teaching programming. With well structured assignments and quiz this course is perfect for the beginners and intermediate level leaning of Python.The bonus materials like interview with Guido, CEO of Coursera, Pizza, Arduino etc are extremely entertaining and gives an overview of the current state of technology and entrepreneurship.The course contains various examples and tips to perform different tasks using Python - which without a doubt shall be useful in the future.Overall this course is very informative, conceptual, motivating for the learners.

Great intro to python for non programmers.

I have experience with programming and Python; was looking for a refresher, so I ended up finding this remedial (not surprising). Ended up breezing through the content in a weekend on 2x speed.

With that said, this class is an excellent introduction to programming and python. Anyone should be able to pick Python up from this class.

However, the only downside to this course in my opinion is that the programming assignments are trivial. In order to start thinking in terms of algorithms, you need to program. If you supplement this class with some programming challenges (which should be easy to find online), this will be a great way to get into Python.

This is an excellent course to learn the very basic of programming. If you have any previous programming background and just want to learn Python syntax and grammer you will be able to go quickly through the lectures and focus on excercising the code.

If you don't have previous experience, you might struggle a little bit to figure out the basics - in that case make sure you don't only watch the lectures but also read the class' book as you progress.

The instructor, Prof. Severence, is absolutely brilliant! The lectures are carefully constructed to take you step by step along the way and his way of teaching really makes you feel comfortable and clears up even the more complicated subjects.

Amazing course, this course also provided video and text book, so i can learn really really fast. I though it's gonna be hard to learn, but after i red the text book and watch the video. This programming language really fast almost like Javascript, but better and the syntax is syntactic sugar. So during the course, i think the textbook and the video so coherent and clear. So as a student i really appreciated for the lesson about Python. Overall, this course really good. Especially, if you don't have any experiences on programming before, but if you already had it, you should take because it's gonna open up your mind to python and others programming languages. 5 Stars for this course

I tried to learn Python 2 years ago. But I was naive and studied other courses at the same time. During this time I was also working night shifts. I had to quit all courses when I found a new job and they never amounted to anything. I am so happy that I now have found Coursera and this is my first course at Coursera. I have really enjoyed it and it has had a nice level for beginners and smart exercises which make the student really learn the skillsets previously explained in the chapter.

I would also like to thank you for releasing the book in ibooks format. This was my first time trying out that format and it made the whole experience so much better and easier.

Thanks again!

This course (for me) was like learning to understand Shakespeare. Though I know how to read, I had difficulty comprehending the language behind the poetry.

Learning the concepts and thought-process in programming was difficult for me. Though I have had a dozen programming teachers, and have read a dozen "Teach Yourself..." programming books, Professor Severance flipped that switch in my head to illuminate the root of those concepts and theories with regards to programming. I am more confident now than I have ever been. Thank you for this course, and thank you for making it and the materials open so that I may share it with others who are interested in learning to program.

Very good course for anyone who has struggled to understand how to program, especially in a self-directed/self-motivated way. This course taught by Dr. Chuck was broken down into concise simple sections that kept me interested, and I could follow along easily, with just the right amount of complexity in the quizzes and chapter exercises, so as not to discourage me.

I've tried to learn computer programming using Java (inside & outside of a tertiary environment) with very limited success, but switched to learning python because it seemed more intuitive. So while i'm not a complete "novice" to programming, this course had the "Goldilocks Effect" for me.

"Just right" :D

This class is great! The material, while dense, is explained at length by the professor, and the lectures do a good job of complementing the information in the provided course textbook. In addition to the professor being very down-to-earth and thorough, the mentors are incredibly responsive and helpful when asked for assistance in the forums. My fellow students are also very engaged, and it's a good choice on the part of the course organizers to get us to grade each other's work for the first (optional) assignment. The logic of programming can be very dense and forbidding, but through this course, you will feel like you have a lot of support in learning how to use it.

I am an engineer and I studied one programming course for a different language in university and I totally hated it. I thought to give it a try again and I found this course really simple for beginners even with no programming experience. Prof. Charles breaks down everything to make sure the message is properly conveyed and understood. Great teacher! I definitely know more about programming now compared to before the course. I am planning to continue the rest of the Python courses.

I think it is a good idea though to add an extra section (or recommend external resources) for more exercises after each chapter in the course for students who are eager to practice more.

Loved this course. I especially like the active transcript feature where you can go back to a specific part of the video by clicking on sentences below the video player window- this is really cool. I also like the arrangement of buttons around a lecture video - it's very intuitive. The "Save A Note" feature works very seamlessly (on PC). You just click the button during the part of the video that you want to save and it adds a snapshot of the video to your list of thumbnails. Lastly, I appreciate the progress bars for each week, and the Overview - these do a good job of showing your overall progress so you know where you stand at any given time. Very well designed.

It's very very good course. I really advise all people who want to learn PYTHON to get this course now and start with it. This course is very organized, and structured well for learners , an excellent lecturer, also good practices for all .Thank You very much COURSERA . You all have to enroll this course if you start to learn PYTHON, prepare yourself, and get into this for the future. I hope you all doing well and listen to my advise, it's for free, and you will realize that after doing it. I have to thank Dr. Chuck, he is my best lecturer of this course and this field that I have been met, so take a look on this course on COURSERA, and you will love it

Sincerely,

As a beginner(computer illiterate) in computer science, I had tried pretty hard in searching for the most suitable Python learning materials, but it turned out the contents I found online were nothing close to this program. This course is carefully designed to be a well organized step by step Python journey, it focuses on the basics, the fundamentals and explains the logic behind each arguments, conditionals, variables, etc. If this is your first time learning how to program and you certainly want to have a clear structure of what is going on with each code you type in and why you are typing it, I will recommend you to try it out. Get ready to say "Hello Python"!!

I was a C Programming enthusiast about 12 years ago. Over the years, I had not got a lot of opportunity to code in C (I had been using only ProC rarely, PL/SQL and Unix Shell). This course was very exciting from the beginning. I always wanted to attend classes of professors like Charles. The Idea becomes far fetched when you have a day job to do. I was so excited from the beginning and completing the course and seeing the certificate was icing on the cake.

Coursera is a big gift for people like me who wanted to pursue higher education, but could not leave their day jobs due to personal commitment.

Thank you to Coursera, University of Michigan and Charles Severance

This was a great intro for anyone who has never programmed and very well articulated. Concepts clearly explained. Giving it 5 stars since the effort that has gone into making these videos is poorly understood by people who have not been in lecturing positions - I salute you ! Having been a self taught programmer from the mid 80's on BASIC with Apple 2E's, it is a breath of fresh air seeing this kind of material on the Internet. I had to dig around in libraries which had books (yes paper!). If the youth could rather spend time exploiting this fountain of knowledge instead of hacking away on FPS and Online gaming then we could see some really cool stuff happen :).

This was my first course which I took and completed. It took me 2-3 days to complete this course. It was a great experience and I would definitely continue with the specialisation. I really liked the cool and fundamental nature of Dr. Chuck. I really enjoyed the course. His idea of putting web series interview was awesome. it provides a great depth of exposure. I very strongly feel that the most enjoyed moment with my course were my coding assignments. I request the course staff to increase those assignments by 4 times. It was the great experience and I really appreciate the effort.

Thanks Everyone for making this happen

Regards,

Rahul Kumar Sharma

Bangalore, India