This course is not for absolute beginners. Even though I passed every exam and assignment, I found this course extremely difficult. I found myself having to rely on other lectures on python and book and internet blogs. This course is not a stand alone course as it if stated.

I wish that there were more exercises where you could practice the lesson that was learned. I think each lesson should be accompanied by an optional exercise.

Videos and instructors are good but Not enough practice exercises and the interface is frustrating. The left navigation pane shrinks becoming unusable so I have to restart the browser. The quiz interface changes your answers during the quiz if you use the arrow keys.

The first programming assignment for week 2 is needlessly complex. the instructions arent clear. its a shame to start with good lectures and ruin the course with nonsense. lots of time required to understand what they are looking for instead of spending it on programming.

Not for beginners unless you are willing to invest a significant amount of time with outside sources, beyond what is stated as needed to complete the course. disappointing.

This is a introductory course i would recommend. I especially liked that the instructors took the time to go through the python visualizer and try to unveil some of the background workings in python.

Jennifer was a good instructor for beginners. Paul was not and, unfortunately, he teaches more than half of the class. He speaks very quickly and skips a huge amount of explanation about what he's typing and then just shows you the outcome. It makes it difficult to know how to apply what he's doing to a different problem - to learn. His rushed style may be appropriate for people who already have experience with Python and just want a refresher, but I was an absolute beginner (and this course is pitched for beginners). I got through the class because of the enormous help of the forum mentor, Patrick, who writes line by line explanations that are extraordinarily helpful. But I had to spend many, many extra hours to make sense of Paul's lessons and the assignments. I received an A in the course, but I don't feel like I have a solid introduction to Python that prepares me for the next level. I'm actually going to retake a version of this course for 1/5 of the cost at Udemy or for no cost at Udacity. I've never taken a course with them so I can't say if they are better but I can say that, in my experience, Coursera is expensive for what you get. Bottom line, if you're looking for a refresher, you may enjoy this course. Patrick and Jennifer are very good. But if you're an absolute beginner, perhaps save your money and look for another option with more thorough explanations. Last, Coursera, please offer video samples of your classes and please list the prerequisites -- those missing elements are big flaws, particularly at your higher price point.

Brilliant Course, I am a total beginner with no knowledge of programming what so ever. The only thing that I know that can help my programming is my typing speed and that's it. And I was able to understand python without any difficulties. There's a little effort in learning new syntax but it gets way much more fun when you think about working on some problems with that syntax. And many such examples are given in this course which are practical and makes programming fun! Definitely recommend it if you are a beginner like me and do not know anything about programming. Also, python is an object oriented language that falls on the easier side when it comes to learning. So, that's another advantage.

An excellent course, showing what is possible for basic instruction in computer programming in the MOOC format. The lectures are clear and interesting, the quiz material tests the presented material (sometimes in challenging and subtle ways) and the three programming assignments provide a gentle introduction to developing one's own code without the headaches of having to decide in advance exactly what functions to write. Employing an autograder for student-submitted code may have necessitated this approach, but the observant student can benefit by paying attention to the insights obtained about how to conduct top-down design. The skills to be learned in this course beyond the introduction to basic Python syntax are fundamental, indeed, and will stand any beginning coder in very good stead.

Don't hesitate even a bit before joining this course. It would prove to be one of the best decisions of your life. I had learned C and Python to some extent before joining this course but, I learned so many new concepts in this course which I didn't know before.

Both of the instructors have designed the videos, notes, quizzes and assignments so beautifully that you would never stop progressing through the course and the mentors especially Sir Patrick Dennis is always there to guide you.

Things which I think were unique about this course:

Use of python visualizer

Use of Python IDLE and the inbuilt debugger

Very informative and summarized reading material

Teachers not only teach python, but they teach how to think like programmer, and precedure to create quality code which is very very rare and value content. Include with his craft on teaching people fundamental of Python for so many year. From professional working ethic (western) or councious working ethic (eastern), they do their very best in the field.

I subcribe to a few computer science, computational thinking, how to program, introduction to computer science, etc. But the content here is the best that I un-enroll all other course. I also highly recommend to any other people who would like to learn to program. Thank Teachers!

I took this course a while ago, and it was the first online course I had done so I had nothing to compare it too. I have since done some other programming classes online and it's made me realize how good this course actually was. The profs are good and communicate clearly, there are lots of questions, posed at the appropriate times, the content is perfect for a beginner: lots of programming, but also a strong focus on the concepts behind the code and *how* it works. I am really grateful this was the first course I took. I think I would feel really frustrated with the holes in some of these other intro courses.

Great for a fundamental course. I have to admit that I had learnt python a few years back and was using this as a practice and revision course. But I learnt a lot more which I can add to my knowledge.

I didn't know a thing about programming. Now after two weeks I feel I've learned a lot already! The instructors are awesome! I believe this course is very compacted and it needs a good deal of work!

Hey guys.

I've seen the new session started and enrolled just to write the review and a little story about myself.

I've taken the course few years ago ( in August 2013) before all the recent changes on Coursera (Specializations etc.).

At the moment I was finishing my university and realized - I had no clue what I was willing to do in my life (my primer occupation was "Manager" - like that's not depressing enough :) . *Joking* ). I saw the course and remember I had fun programming on Pascal in high school so I've decided: there is no harm to try programming once in a while.

I was so amazed about my first steps, I started few other courses here and at MIT platform. I googled and read everything I could found. That was my "idee fixe" at the time.

Long story short, few months later I got my first job as a software developer. Today, 3,5 years later, I'm Team Lead at my current project and one of the most payed employee at my company.

I just want to thank Jennifer and Paul, as well as all the course team involved.

Also to those who just studying right now - take your time and work hard. It totally worth it.

Best regards, Viktor.

This was a fantastic class. The course covered a lot more than I expected and the material was quite challenging, but the professors taught in a clear and concise way with interesting examples that made the concepts easy to understand. It's a strange thing to say for an online course where the communication is one-direction, but I actually felt like they were warm and friendly. The discussion forum is very active with quick and helpful responses from the moderators. The exams and assignments weren't just there as a formality as is the case with many online courses, but they actually prompted me to think hard and put in a lot of time and effort to put the things I learned to use. I would recommend this course to anyone who is interested in learning Python for the first time, and I would like to thank the professors again for a wonderful learning experience. Thank you Paul & Jennifer!

+ I finished the entire course in 2 weekends because it was so fun and I couldn't wait until the next week. I think that says a lot.

If you're completely new to programming AND do not come from a math-physics-chemistry-engineering intensive background, you'll find this course to be a wonderful introduction to programming. The lectures and readings are very well-thought-out and organized. The choice of assignments and questions for the quizzes will enable one to reinforce and apply the concepts being taught in each lecture in the course. I wholeheartedly recommend!

If you do come from a technical background, like the one I mentioned above, have facility in abstraction, and are particularly meticulous in the reading of instructions, this course will be very easy for you. That being said, it can be a very fast-paced introduction to Python since one can easily complete the entire course in less than a week. This was the case for me. I highly recommend it for a quick introduction to Python.

My primary goal was to get to know what really happens inside the program when we type any kind of code. In that regard, this course has fulfilled and to be honest, surpassed my expectations .

Let me highlight that the assignments are especially something that I loved doing, and I have a learnt a lot about the thought process that goes behind writing any program as well.

Therefore, I am immensely grateful to instructors Jennifer and Paul who undoubtedly have left left no stone unturned in designing a course which explains the fundamentals of programmimg in python lucidly and efficiently.

I feel very confident now in coding with python which is strongly aligned my career goal of becoming a data scientist. I'll be sure to recommend this wonderful course to my fellow aspirants as well. :)

I took 2 Python courses before this course. With effort I passed those with 100%.

This course is supposed to be for beginners with no prior experience but the difficulty level seems unnecessary. This is not a "learn the basics of programming" class, it's a "learn the meat, bones, guts, anatomy, and how to make an elbow out of a tailbone" class. If you're like me you will learn a lot but you have to invest so much time and effort if you're not savvy at math/algebra/computer science.

This course is really fun, easy and you get a lot to learn. The mentors of this course use simple language to make us understand. The most important part is that the programming language is taught from scratch with a lot (a lot) of fun examples, so you really get to know to how to use the methods and function with different algorithms and approach. The Assignments are great way to boost the learning as you have to work on the logic yourself and also the assignments are easy and have very interesting topics, this makes you willing to take the assignments. I really appreciate the efforts the course instructors have put in, in making all those videos. Thanks to both the mentors.

Personally I would like to say that, I felt like the programming language is spoon-feed to me because from The school I passed, we have to do a lot of effort ourselves to learn even from the teachers there. Thanks again to both the instructors.

This was a wonderful course. The explanations were clear, with lots of examples.

I appreciated the summary sheets that were provided at the end of each lecture, which were very helpful when reviewing material later. The quizzes, both within the lectures and at the end of each week, helped continually test that I was actually absorbing the information I was learning.

I also found the transcription of the lecture helpful at times to understand concepts when I was finding that re-watching that section of the audio wasn't helping.

The assignments were very useful for putting what I had learned into practice, and the automarking was very helpful for helping me identify mistakes I had made. And importantly, it helped keep me motivated and engaged to improve my skills in Python. 10/10!

I liked this course. Even though I am experienced programmer in different languages, I chose this course to learn Python. Although I found the Visualizer sessions boring, I completely agree it is very important to teach young or beginning programmers how the memory and data structures behave. I also liked the programming assignments as they were either funny or giving an example of real life problems that can a beginning programmer face in the future and shows him how they can solve them by programming (ant that they can!). The only recommendation I have is to include more programming assignments as people learn programming the best when really programming - answering quizzes is not the same, may work for schools and for grades, but here we are to learn to program ;-)

I thought this was a very good course, and quizzes were very interesting and forced you to really stretch your Python muscles and question what you really learned so far. The only things I would have liked to see more on this course would be a few more exercises, and ideally a few more videos that help you get a better idea on how Python will compile the code even before you test the concept learned in the Python shell. I still feel like I haven't made enough progress, and would very much like a sequence to this course. With a few more videos easing in on the more difficult problems in the quizzes, and possibly a third programming assignment would make this course even better. I would rate 4.5 stars, but I'll round it up to 5. Thank you!

I retired as an engineering manager 6 months ago after 41 years in the computer hardware business. I never really did much programming and wanted to take it up when I retired. I tried some on line reference books but didnt really stay with it. I really needed more structure. This course was the answer for me. I got enough programming from the exercises, lectures, and quizzes that I can now move ahead with more self teaching as I have a grasp of the basics and have learned to use on-line references to fill in the gaps. This was my first Coursera course and I will be taking others. Big kudos to Jennifer and Paul, University of Toronto, and their team for this great class. I would sincerely recommend this course to others.

In this fine introduction to computer programming, I covered a lot of ground. The course lays out an elegantly constructed approach to the fundamentals of coding with Python 3.4. The videos and materials were filled with elucidating code examples and sensible development practices, all meticulously explained. I've never found a more approachable guide to building well-documented functions or a more useful explanation of how relationships between variables and values are managed during program execution. The quizzes challenged my preparedness to apply a solid understanding of the subject matter. I applaud presenters Paul Gries and Jennifer Campbell for the top-notch way they crafted this excellent introductory course.

I enrolled in this MOOC because I saw from one website that this was the best introductory course in Python programming. It lives up to its reputation of being the best because the topics were presented in good chronological order. The in video quizzes were challenging and the lecture quizzes forced you to think and therefore apply what you have learned. The only thing I could ask for was more programming exercises. There were only three and I felt like I could do one more. Kudos to the instructors and the team for preparing a very comprehensive introductory course in Python programming. For someone like me who wants to start a career in Data Science, I definitely recommend this MOOC.

Years ago I sat an intro to C++ course at university and really struggled, it was just too deep down the rabbit hole at the time. Now completing this course has renewed my interest in the subject.

Easy to understand videos with excellent explanations of concepts and thought processes. Relevant questions and tests to ensure the subject matter sticks. While it's still only a starting point to continue learning, I'm now a lot further down the road than I was when I started.

I would spend 30min during my lunch breaks each day at work to do the course and managed to complete around 85% of the course (excl. quiz/tests) like this so time commitment isn't excessive.

Highly recommended!