David Joyner
Complete your introductory knowledge of computer science with this final course on objects and algorithms. Now that you’ve learned about complex control structures and data structures, learn to develop programs that more intuitively leverage your natural understanding of problems through object–oriented programming. Then, learn to analyze the complexity and efficiency of these programs through algorithms. In addition, certify your broader knowledge of Introduction to Computing with a comprehensive exam. By the end of this course, you’ll be able to write programs in Python that leverage your more natural understanding of data structures by creating objects to represent the structures you work with most often. For example, if you were creating a class roster application, you’ll learn how to create an object representing a student’s name, ID number, and attendance record. Then, you’ll be able to create applications that leverage sorting and searching algorithms to sort that roster alphabetically, search for a particular student, and evaluate the efficiency of both those operations. Structurally, the course is comprised of several parts. Instruction is delivered via a series of short (2–3 minute) videos. In between those videos, you’ll complete both multiple choice questions and coding problems to demonstrate your knowledge of the material that was …
Instructor Details
Courses : 6
Specification: Computing in Python IV: Objects & Algorithms
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29 reviews for Computing in Python IV: Objects & Algorithms
Add a review
| Price | Free |
|---|---|
| Provider | |
| Duration | 47.5 hours |
| Year | 2021 |
| Level | Beginner |
| Language | English |
| Certificate | Yes |
| Quizzes | No |
FREE
Sian Thang –
I am taking it right now. I think it is pretty good. But I am going write a longer and more comprehensive comment on the course later on.
Leonore Phillips –
I already know how to program in other languages, but wanted to learn python. This course did what I hoped it would I feel like I have a fairly strong grasp on the syntax of python. I briefly skimmed the transcripts (instead of watching the videos) and didn’t read the text book (but took the tests) because most of the more theoretical/foundational programming material I already knew.
I wish there was more opportunity for a little more complex programming problems, but I could see that might be more difficult for actual beginners.
Wim Leys –
I have programmed without taking any course in Python 2.x more than 10 years ago (and I forgot most of it). I am interested in data science and was looking for a Python course as a first step up. I was also looking at an introductory programming course suitable for my kids; Python is perfect for that.
I have followed all 4 “Computing in Python” courses, and I feel ready now to take on more advanced Python courses or books.
Each course is divided in 4 chapters, each chapter ends with an “exam”, the course ends with a final exam. Each course took about a week to complete (+ 3 hours/evening and 2 full days in the weekend (+ 8 hours per day). (I had to hurry, the courses were about to get archived.). The programming exercises and debugging take most of the time and are at the same time the most valuable to grok everything.
There is a SmartBook that is provided as a PDF. Next time I would read the PDF instead of viewing the video’s, that would have been faster.
The teaching is well structured and the programming problems are fun to make: they are quite basic at the beginning and get more challenging afterwards. You will make so many exercises that programming in Python really becomes an automation and the exercises never become boring.
I have advised my kids (they are almost or around 20 year) to take the courses.
I recommend the courses.
Mark Schwarman –
This course is the fourth in a series. The first three provide the mechanics of Python. This course is more “Pythonic” with the inclusion of slightly more advanced concepts. Object Oriented Programming is introduced. Overall, excellent as an introduction. More advanced programming problems are introduced but are not required for completion of course. As a note, I took all 4 in the series. I had studied Python before but my knowledge and abilities were muddled. I can now go on with a much more solid base. On the minus side, not every method is discussed {for example in dictionaries, calling a key without a variable associated returns an error; this is sidestepped by a Try: Exception: block, while a ‘get’ method would handle it more smoothly]. One has to recognize though, you can’t include everything. Not perfect, but well worthwhile.
Anonymous –
I would never expect such huge amount of knowledge for free. In addition it is very well structured, theory and practice at a perfect balance and if you have any questions, you can always look for an answer on a forum. I recommend this course to everyone who wants to start their adventure with programming.
Anonymous –
I have completed this and the four previous Computing in Python courses. Usually do each one in a day or two. I have found the content to be very well explained and I have learned quite a bit during the “free” outline. However, I have seen many errors, from grammar and “extra” words that should’ve been edited out. I have also found errors in the autograder, for example:
Coding problem 4
We tested your code with players (‘HORSE’, ‘HOR’, ‘HORS’, ‘HORSE’).
We expected check horse winner to return the str “Players 1, 2: keep playing!”.
However, it returned the str “Players 2, 3: keep playing!”.
Clearly, players two and three were still going, as my code returned, but the autograder still showed 1 & 2.
With that said, overall, I am extremely happy with the course and the knowledge that I have taken away from it. If I had paid for this, I would’ve been quite disappointed to have found all these errors.
Again, content and training I would give a 5, but the overall web grading and presentation is much lower due to all the mistakes that I have seen. (and i’m not very good at programming yet).
Thank you! I do enjoy these very much!
Neville A. Cross –
I finished the course material and have read all the final programming task and questions. This course provided me with a great overview of object oriented programming. I wish there was another course with advance topics. This course requires focus, but it is not difficult. I took this course because I wanted to learn Python. This course explain why you program the way you do, not just how to do it. As I lack programming background this was what I really needed. I highly recommend the whole series of courses from David Joyner and Georgia Tech to learn how to program with python. Avoid at all cost any crash courses if you do not know how to program.
Andrew Nguyen –
The class structure is amazing. At first, I thought the length of the videos were short. As I started to progress through the course, it was perfect because it gave you exercises to apply the knowledge. Married with the Mcgraw smartbook, I felt extremely prepared going into the exams. This course have renewed my interest in Computer Science which led me to pursue additional courses and a Masters in Computer Science.
Alex Rezaee –
This is a great course with a great instructor. This course covers some basic yet hard to understand concepts in a tangible way. Highly recommend this course for everyone who would like to solidify their understanding of the basics of programming and computing.
Anonymous –
I really loved this course. I have done programming in Java for App development so a lot of the concepts were review but I was completely new to Python syntax and “Python ic” thinking and this really helped close the gap for me. It’s obvious that this would be a great starter course for anyone (I wish I had started with this instead of Java!) and it’ll really ease you into the world of programming!
Anonymous –
Very easy to do on your own. The whole way it’s built up makes it hard to stop, you just want to listen to another lecture or do another small problem. Amazing course!
Vadim Dmitriev –
This is the best set of courses (I thru IV) on Python 3 I could find on the Internet for the complete or almost complete beginners. It is problem based, so you come to learn Python basics by trying to solve problems, some of them explaining useful or just interesting concepts. In addition, the course introduces you to some basics of computer science as well. So the course gave me even more than I expected. Thank you, David Joiner and the team!
Anonymous –
The class was excellent. I haven’t written production code in over 20 years and this was a great (re) introduction to coding. Can’t wait to start using the skills I’ve gained and maybe take some more courses. This course was a great combination of course work, problems, and coding and the instructor did an awesome job of presenting the material.
Anonymous –
This course and professional certificate as a whole has been excellent. David Joyner, the instructor, is really good at explaining concepts that can be very confusing in a simple and understandable way. I think the series was really solid as a whole, but I do feel like the last chapter (Objects & Algorithms) was rushed a little bit. It feels like whoever made this series started to get tired and lose focus towards the end. I also noticed that the deeper you dive into the series, the more and more weird grammar mistakes and auto grader errors you will find in the problem sets, which is all further evidence of how rushed the course became towards the end. But if you put all these minor disruptions aside, this course is extremely underrated and underrecognized. It is truly one of the best introductions you can get to programming. It gets the difficulty spot on, it is easy normal for the most part, but can get very challenging towards the end. And you get an incredible amount of practice problems to make sure that the things you learned are sticking in your head. It also does a very good job at exposing you to several areas of computing and programming so that you can have an idea of where to go once you are finished. The only major thing that I feel like was missing was a big capstone project at the end. But considering how beginner level and basic the courses are, I don’t think that would be a very big deal. Overall, I would give it five stars.
Anonymous –
The whole program (Computing in python I IV) is catchy and very well structured. From my point of view, in 99% percent of cases, the topics are explained clearly and easy to understand (I had no previous experience with Python and just some with programming in other languages). Sometimes, as it was already mentioned here, the are some ‘errors’ in assignments but if you read them carefully, it makes no problem avoiding them.
To quickly sum it up, I think this is a great course.
Anonymous –
This final course of a set of 4 introductory courses on Python was very useful. I appreciated the final problem set since they were longer and took more thought than the rest of the series. I send a big thank you to the instructor David Joyner and his team for this wonderful free resource. I was able to complete this course while all the modules were free. As of January, 2019, this changed but it is still a worthwhile course.
Anonymous –
lets clear from the beginning that this course and all series is amazing. I rated 3 stars because I got the audit experience, and as such, I am missing a lot of coding problems practice. That makes the final practice exam a bit difficult (not that the problems are really hard but is that you are not familiar enough with the process to answer those). I suggest two solutions, make the problems free again (as it was before January 2019) or add more coding problems in the basic course material (coding exercises). Beyond that, I love this course.
Anonymous –
Very thorough, very fundamental but critical walk through of major computation and programming concepts and ideas. Good practice and questions too. This is not hard but is definitely hands on and you definitely need to put in work! I love it!
Anonymous –
This class was great! The material was presented in an understandable and intuitive way. The programming questions were especially helpful!
Anonymous –
I just completed the CS1301 Professional Certificate program of four courses covering Introduction to Python Programming. The instructor, David Joyner did a great job presenting the material. The programming assignments along with the presentations really helped me understand the material. The interactive programming environment that allowed for testing of the code before submitting it for grading and the feedback after submission are great. This is the first course that I have taken that forces you to apply the teachings to real world type problems. I highly recommend this course.
Anonymous –
Generally, the course was pretty good. I learned quite a bit coming in with zero Python experience. The only hiccup was that if you ever got stuck on a problem, there was no real way to get the right answer other than to just keep trying, trying again, trying again, etc. In classroom based courses, you could just take a zero on the question and an instructor would give you the answer so you could at least see how to do it not here. There were more than a few times where Google, StackExchange, etc. were more handy than the course videos, Slack channel, etc. in solving a problem. Made it through everything, but more than a few times I spent 4 6 hours trying to figure out one problem which was more than a bit frustrating.
Vineeth Duvvuri –
The course is very compact and the examples are too good for a beginner. The lectures along with the book are quite good.
Anonymous –
I finished this course, and the CS1301 Xseries as a whole. It gives a great overview of all concepts of programming, after the course, you are capable of going further in any area of programming.
The language python is great for beginners, it is quite intuitive, and can help you get into programming, and maybe move to another (maybe more complex) language if you need to in the future.
On the material itself, there are videos with exercises accompanying them. The videos are very clear, the instructor takes the time to explain everything without skipping over any parts. If you already know some of it, you can get right to the exercises to check your knowledge. If you are new to a concept however, the exercises are a great way to check you understand it. In addition to problems directly related to knowledge and concepts, there are programming exercises with realistic problems, like coding a program which tells you where you can get food with the money you have or one which looks in a database to find what football team has scored the greatest amount of points during the season. Coding exercises are also a great plus to get into programming and start coding as soon as you learnt the concepts.
All in all, a course I would gladly recommend for someone wanting to get into programming, it’ll give you all the knowledge you need to start making your own programming projects or get into higher levels of programming with other courses
Anonymous –
Excellent course to gain an understanding of computer science. The professor has an in depth understanding and knows to transfer his knowledge very well. I recommend this for anyone who is looking for a way into programming.
Anonymous –
It was great having this course. I really feel that i learn much about how python works in objects and i have a basic idea for algorithms. Of course, the field is very large and the things that still have to learn too many. But i made a lot of practice ,Mr David Joyner explains subject after subject very analyticaly and at the end, pieces finds their position.
Anonymous –
I have found in this course what I was looking for I was playing with a thought about changing my career path to programming in my head for a while, but didnt know where to start? I think this was really good choice. It is selfpaced (for employed person it is necessary), well explained (really, probably the best learning material I have met in my life structurally, explanatory, comprehensive, fluently building on preceding chapters, well everything it should have, almost fun to go through…) course with lot of practise excercises (you actually program most of the time on real life problems). Also you get the idea where to move next from the exercises topic orientation. I have done all 4 courses from the profesional certificate and I thing it was really well spend money, 5 star, recommending!
Ryan Bain –
David’s explanations are clear and relatable. The concepts taught are reinforced by LOTS of practice that challenge and instill comprehension every step of the way. Every ounce of time and effort applied to this course pays dividends. I would recommend this course to anyone interested in Python or programming in general.
Anonymous –
This course is the fourth part of the edx program Introduction to Python Programming.
I started this program without any prior experience in programming and after successfully completed it i would like to share my experience and give an honest review.
The program is well structured and will give to any candidate that complete the amount of work required (exercises, videos etc) a very solid and robust understanding of programming principles and methods.
It is designed from academics that their job is to teach you by a structured process. I bealive David Joyner is one of the professors that can make you love the subject that they are teaching and inspire you to move further in the field.
After completing this program I can cope with most of the problems in programming because what I gained from this, is the critical thinking required to think as programmer and not any particular expertise (oop, algorithms etc.) besides that, the program deals with the most parts of programming aspects (procedural, data structures, algorithms, oop) and gives you a nice feel about what to follow after completing it.
I highly recommend this program to anyone that wants to start learning programming it does worth any penny from your money and very minute from your time.
Anonymous –
Excellent course to get started with python. I really appreciate the approach, where not only coding is taught but also the basics of how a computer works on the inside. I would totally recommend it. Thanks!