Good course for trying out some Python programming related to Dna code searches. If you are new to Python, definitely do the complete python training before starting the course. Most exercises have sufficient guidance in the text/lesson combined with hints in the discussion forums. I liked it enough that I am going to try the bioinformatics specialization. This course does not teach how to interface python with other online bioinformatics programs/tools.

The course content is highly challenging and that's great for a sense of accomplishment. The biological problems motivates the biologist to go through the abstract mathematical concepts(but I have to admit there is a threshold where the biologist can not get it well anymore(greedy motifs, gibbs ...) and I wonder if he does really need it to be practical with day to day problems with chip array seq selex...)

be ready you will struggle hard here

This has been a very helpful course, showing me how to program in a fun way because every coding challenge is linked to a biological question. I think the pace of the course was good, without any prior experience in coding I've had a few moments where I was stuck. But thankfully with some patience and helpful replies from the teaching assistant of the course to my questions in the discussion, it was possible to get past those coding problems.

I have some programming background (in R) so I was able to understand much of the code but I definitely would have been lost had I not had any programming experience. And indeed, in the third-party lesson host, many people were commenting on how they were lost. I was able to learn python at a basic level through this course. Definitely not for beginners, however.

The platform makes it difficult to retrieve code from previous lessons (i.e. navigating through lessons in Stepik is tedious and cumbersome). Some of the lessons are not explained very clearly.

However, the course is challenging enough to force you to think and implement solutions. I recommend this for any biologists willing to learn bioinformatics concepts.

I believe the course is kinda too hard for beginners. I had to go through a lot of stress at some points. Perhaps stressing a little bit more on some of the more complex syntaxes would help a lot. That said, I really enjoyed the course and really felt like I learned a lot! I am so grateful for the opportunity of finally getting into bioinformatics.

Very good course that provides a taste on what bioinformatics algorithms look like.

If you are not familiar with Python this will be too difficult for you. Practice python for at least 2 weeks before jumping here.

Explanation for contents in topic 4 can be improved.

Overall it is a great, highly interactive and intellectually challenging course!

There where some annoying problems when taking the quizzes. For example .1 was wrong, but 0.1 was correct. Other than that it was pretty good. I already have a degree in computers so the algorithms weren't too hard, but they could be difficult for someone who has never programmed. I only wish subsequent classes were also free.

In my opinion this course provided quite an improvement to my Python programming and problem solving skills. Reason I cut off 1 star from my rating was : in some steps I couldn't understand the instructions so I didn't know what to do. In future revisions you can give more examples or schemas to explain the concepts better.

Pretty solid course for a beginner. I think the methods used here were nicely game-ified so it was fun and the course material was challenging. However, as in most programming or higher-level courses, the user is rewarded highly for doing their own research outside to apply to the situations required in the course material.

This course is difficult for beginners, who have never take a programming course before. It took me a lot of time (days) to figure out most of the codes in this course. Although i couldn`t fully understand all the topics, i finished this course having a general idea of the basics in Python and what i need to learn next.

Not a bad course, but it is a python programming class. There are some steeper steps at times if you are not used to python. Support can seem distant if you hit one of these steeper steps. It's best to have a coding attitude and not a "I want to read about biology and genetics" attitude to approach this class.

Although it is said that you will learn programming from scratch, people with no experience might find this course difficult, specially Weeks 3 and 4. I encourage newly programmers to not give up, there is light at the end of the tunnel and you can find useful information in the comments.

Very good course to get an introduction to bioinformatics. I would also recommend taking an R language oriented course. On the other hand, this course would benefit from an update in its feedback system so that students are more likely to finish and avoid getting stuck at certain points.

Overall it was a good experience. I had so much fun learning the connection between molecular biology and programming. The programming assignment was okay but the theory of molecular biology was still out of reach for me. We had to use a third party application (stepik), which is good.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.