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

4.8
stars
226,302 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

DM

Sep 7, 2019

Great course! I always thought of programming as a too-difficult-and-complex thing for me; now I want to learn more. Thank you Dr Charles Severance for explaining everything in such an affordable way.

SV

Sep 8, 2020

Course was very intresting and interactive. And also looking forward to start python data structure course. Charles sir was teaching perfectly and his lecture content was also very helpful.Thank you!!

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51 - 75 of 10,000 Reviews for Programming for Everybody (Getting Started with Python)

By ADITYA K D o E

Jul 15, 2020

i feel this isn't a course for beginners it should be for intermediates as i found the exercises very hard and moreover the instructor teaches basic stuff and the graded assignments are tough before some assignments he doesn't even discusses those type of problems. All i'm saying is anybody taking this course as a beginner without any prior knowledge in programming ,he/she would be discouraged.

By MICHAIL M

Feb 10, 2021

This course more than met my expectations! In his online videos Charles Severance explains the basic concepts of programming in an easily understandable way.Abig thank you and hope to 'see' you again!

By Maria J S

Sep 11, 2021

Can't wait to learn more from this professor. I really liked his way of explaining. If you are not new to programming, you may want to skip this first course. I still took it, and I still learnt some.

By Haydar M

Jul 2, 2021

Dr Chuck is amazing!! Great methods, and informative.. Gained knowledge and confidence. Definitely worth the time.. cant wait to start my next course with the University of Michigan, and with Dr Chuck

By shrish v

Sep 9, 2020

Course was very intresting and interactive. And also looking forward to start python data structure course. Charles sir was teaching perfectly and his lecture content was also very helpful.Thank you!!

By Stuart K

Jan 27, 2017

The course material is fine. In fact its good. However I completed the entire course in 4 hours. Whilst I have some basic programming experience I am by no means an expert. There really is very very little material in this course. The assignments are also very simple and automatically graded. The course fees are not particularly transparent. I think the course is FAR too expensive for the content provided. All of the other reviews I have seen for this course are a single line such as 'I liked the course a lot' or something equally vacuous and unhelpful. If you are a beginner I would suggest trying 'Python for the absolute beginner' by Michael Dawson. If you have ANY programming experience, you might be better with a more advanced course.

By Kanei P

Jan 13, 2019

Most vague info, assignments don't even have anything to do with the videos, and the videos are not helpful because they don't give any examples. Terrible, and extremely hard. I do not recommend this course to beginners, or to anyone for that fact.

By DENNIS H V U

Apr 27, 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.

By Mayar S F

May 17, 2019

It's perfect

By Tofayel K

Nov 22, 2020

This course is very useful and the way Dr. Charles Severance teaches is outstanding. It's gonna be a perfect course for those who are looking for a programming course specially designed for beginners.

By Hrishikesh U B

Aug 22, 2020

I love Coursera , it's so helpful for me . I hope that other lessons and courses are also cool like this and the Dr. Chuck ia the coolest ever teacher i have ever seen so thank you very much Coursera.

By Mohak G

May 24, 2020

Great course to start programming in Python.

By Josh M

Oct 21, 2016

This Course is bad! I try to ask for help and then mentors only reply with I cant help you because of the Honor code. Well tat doesn't sound like much of an honor code to me. Of course I am doing my own work duh! I just need help. Dont we all need help from time to time. I think Coursera needs a lot of improvement. I am extremely dissatisfied with Coursera and this course but especially the mentors and their lack of mentoring. Education should be uplifting and positive and an area where individuals can ask question and receive help and not be scolded for asking help or asking questions like a beat down dog. I mean really I think Coursera needs to go take some hints from a real school or university and seek information on education and how it is best when students teach each other and If I can ask for help and learn from others and give then the opportunity to help me that whats the point of a discussion board. Do away with the discussion board or change the way the honor code is written. Yes I agree with Honor and doing your own work but come on. Help and tutoring is a valuable part of education and necessary to learning! Please make the necessary changes to better Coursera and make it a more positive educational experience. I mean please I am trying the best I can with what I have got and no one seems to want to help me learn and improve on my skills and my understanding. Make changes and make them now.

Another reason I hate this course Is that Coursera does not believe in people helping one another. Then the mentors cant even explain how to work through the problem. The menotrs make things more stressful than they need to be because the dont give help or hints or clues. People need to talk to people on the phone or in person or the instructor needs to give better examples so people can better figure things out on their own. I just think Coursera is crap and this has been a very unpleaseant experience for me. Then on the discussing board i see others struggling with the same things and the mentos dont help them. People are pleading for help and not receiving any guidance or direction to help them figure things out. Things need to change with this program. They need to change soon!

By Stephen Z

Dec 20, 2015

This course has been dumbed down so much that no moderately intelligent person should be subjected to it. Coursera really needs to rethink its approach to teaching. I can only express my sympathy for those were seduced into actually paying for this course.

By Mary A

Sep 30, 2020

Very beautifully taught. I gained basic python programming knowledge quite easily. The lecturer is fun and encourages students to want to learn more. In general, it was an awesome learning experience.

By Ajay k N G

Sep 13, 2020

Very good introduction to basic programming. Very easy for beginners in python who have already some programming background - but still extremely useful to quickly and efficiently learn python basics.

By Jan H H

Jul 26, 2019

Good systematic course for beginners - although for real beginners some parts may be quite a bit too geeky, the promise that even if you don't know much about computers you will still be able to follow the course doesn't convince me. If you had some experience with programming, go at your own speed with the course materials and you will be able to finish within a couple of hours - I finished the whole seven weeks in two days, not working on it full time and watching all the videos, which is not really necessary. Some of the examples don't seem to make much practical sense, which would be good for motivation, but they serve their purpose to understand syntax and structure. Some have errors, which is surprising given the huge audience that can help to correct them. There are extra materials about hard- and software developers that are not really connected.

By Luca

Mar 7, 2018

The course states it is meant to be for everybody but the frequent mention of error messages and how they are not meant to judge the student makes me thing it is meant for teenagers or a generally young audience.

Some concepts are introduced very quickly and without the proper background. The exercises are mostly on the easy side and they do not build on each other (example: functions are introduced in a class but not used in the following exercises). This ends giving the impression that the course is not well structured and does not try to make the student find synergies between concepts.

While this can work somehow for most of the course, the last week sees the introduction of some very advanced concepts (None and IS) which are just barely touched, leaving the student to have to search for information outside of the course. This is made worse by the overtly restrictive requirements of the assignments that use the autograder. The autograder does not let you explore potential pitfalls in your code, which are much better clarified by using the debugger (not introduced) or the python online visualizer (not introduced). I strongly advise to introduce one of these two tools in the course.

By Avijit D

Jun 1, 2021

Easy to follow and not boring. The instructor breaks things down in simple form. The Coursera platform is sometimes a bit quirky but otherwise the content in this course I thought was quite excellent.

By arun k

Dec 14, 2019

This course is absolutely pathetic. The instructor is condescending and there is very little that you can learn from this course. The course is structured poorly. Short videos that have very little connection with the actual course material are thrown around the course structure. There is no continuity because of these videos. This is definitely not good quality material on python for beginners. Do not be deceived by the high rating of the course. You will be disappointed.

By Kunal p

Jan 15, 2022

Very beautifully taught. I gained basic python programming knowledge quite easily. The lecturer is fun and encourages students to want to learn more. In general, it was an awesome learning experience.

By Maaike G

Jan 28, 2017

Although the course pace was very well suited for a total beginner, I found the didactics of this course not so well-structured. The examples and starter codes caused quite some confusion, and the underlying coding principles were not made very explicit. I've finished an introductory Python course from the University of Toronto, and found that course much better structured. It gave me a level of understanding that I would probably not have reached by following the UMich course alone.

By Mark L

Jun 4, 2020

Very brief and inadequate for a $50 investment.

I am very disappointed that the course was, surprisingly and unexpectedly cut off in the middle of the already too short beginning course. Even more cash required to continue.

Compared to online free resources available, definitely not worth the investment. I wish I had my money back to put to better use.

I am surprised even further by all the online positive reviews that encouraged me to start with Coursera.

Mark London

By JOSE P

Jul 24, 2020

Chapter One, is absoluty time loss, is ego storm, not need lisen

one chapter, no have teory for read, exercises. only bla bla bla.

and bad speakers

No tiene español... pero lo que escrbi fue..

El capitulo Uno, ¡un capitulo completo¡ no enseña nada

es absolutamente tiempo perdido, es una tormenta de egos, no necesito escuchar eso.

no tiene lecturas, no ejercicios, solo bla bla bla

y los relatores son pesimos, pueden ser inteligentes, pero no son instructores.

By Jeff W

Sep 7, 2017

Coming at this with no experience in coding at all, this course was extremely difficult. I think the most difficult part of this class was following the videos. The reason is because real world uses weren't given very often. I struggled with motivation nearing the end of this course because the examples in the videos focused on the "what" the code does and not so much the "why." Because of this, the usefulness of some of the discussed functionalities in python are still unknown to me. To remedy that, I would recommend the exercises in the videos reflect what will be done in the assignments, at least to some degree. I couldn't help but get hung up on what "zork" had to do with anything (among a few other examples), or why I would ever need to find the largest letter in a phrase like "hello world." In fact, I think my biggest struggle going through this course was fighting thoughts like, "what am I going to use this for?" I would like to see more content related to solving real world problems, even if it's just in the bonus content.

Overall, while it was very difficult, I really do recommend this course to others, and in fact I already have recommend it to two of my friends. The instructor seems like a really awesome guy, he's easy to listen to, and overall he's the kind of teacher than any student would love to have.