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

4.8
stars
226,322 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

GL

Feb 28, 2016

Excellent for a beginner!! Professor Severance follows a very smooth and efficient method of teaching that reduces anxiety and increases passion for learning!! Recommended to anyone starting Python!!!

DJ

Oct 19, 2017

Dr. Chuck has a special ability to teach programming to people who doesn't necessarily have programming background. This is rare among programming teachers, and shows that he is an excellent educator.

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201 - 225 of 10,000 Reviews for Programming for Everybody (Getting Started with Python)

By Pritesh P

Sep 22, 2015

Excellent overview of first few concepts in Programming in Python. Useful in understanding programming concepts (early early stages) for those who have never done programming and refresher for those who have, but it has been a while, I look forward to seeing how the other courses in the this series are. Only reason I didn't give a 5 star rating is because I think in addition to the given assignments there should be an extra assignment per week with practical applications. Granted not enough of the language is know yet to warrant anything really complex, but perhaps just number converter for scientific notation, or a tip calculator with code given that can make it practical to use (connect it to a website or phone application).

By Ishaan k

Nov 6, 2019

This is a very nice start for python beginners. Professor Charles Severence's way to teaching is very good. This course will help you build a strong foundation in python. I liked the conditional sequences lecture from other lectures. The assignments and quize were so engrossing and tricky which helped me a lot. Moreover the discussion forum is a nice help for fellow students. I would recommend you to take this course. I completed this course in 2 days along with all assignments and quiz submitted. The bonus videos give a nice exposure about successful people and career. I also loved them.

By Harsh K M

May 15, 2020

It's not as updated as python's latest version and it's sort of not possible to keep the teaching material up to date, in online courses, I was using Python 3.8.2 while learning this course and the final problem was always giving me an error telling me that " '>' not supported between instances of 'float' and 'NoneType'"

but the problem didn't show me any error on the autograder. so it's cool! and you are a very great professor, really very interesting content!

By Dmitry R

Jul 25, 2022

Great overview to introduce Python. Good material. Good conceptual examples. Trainer is very knowledgeable. Very clear and informative course.

By Suprita D

Jun 29, 2020

great course, some more examples can be included

By Adarsh T

May 15, 2020

This Course is really very helpful for beginners.

By Tao S

Mar 31, 2020

good course but its more basic than i expected

By Nikhil M

Aug 17, 2018

Nice course to have a clear idea of python

By John S S I

Feb 3, 2016

All of the review I've read were that the course was great, so maybe it is me that was the problem. However, as I would go through the written material, I would try to work the problems given as examples, and when they did not work, I was confused and wondered why the example given to teach us would not work. I asked for help a number of times, providing screen shots of the results I got trying to duplicate what the example was supposed to show, and page numbers of where the example was presented in the course materials. One former student basically said that I should not be trying to duplicate the examples, but just accept the concept they were trying to show. Another did a good job of explaining one of my questions, but then all replies to my question ceased. I decide to drop out of the class and try teaching myself, as I have done on everything I have learned about computers since my 1st computer in 1983. I have been very impressed with other courses given by Coursera members, but this one was not one of them. All of the other submissions praise the course, so maybe it is just me, but none of the other submissions mentioned any actual things the course had done - just that it was great.

By C B

Apr 28, 2021

This is a mixed bag of a course. While the lecturer is good, the assignments are very difficult. Do not be reassured by Dr Severance's comment that you don't need math for this course: you do. Even if it's a small amount for most, math is by far my most difficult subject and thus I was frustrated when there was no instruction for certain mathematical expressions that it seemed we were just expected to know. The moderators in the forum are vague at best but I have seen some extremely rude and patronising comments from them towards those who were struggling like myself and objected to the difficulty and assignment explanations, especially since a few of the assignments are not entirely based on the lectures. It was unclear that some information was not presented in the lectures and that we would have to use the textbook, but even the textbook seemed overly brief and not that helpful for the more difficult work. I did learn a lot, but I can see people getting frustrated with this if they are like myself and have zero background with math/coding.

By Nathan W

Jul 2, 2021

Disappointing. Due to all these good rating, I thought this would be a really good course. My main issue with this course is that it is NOT for beginners. The videos have good production quality and the instructor is quite clear. But when it comes to trying the coding exams, the videos just dont teach you what to do. Also whats with the heavy maths for the coding exams?? Cant you just teach me the princbles of coding, not A level maths. Look somewhere else if you want to learn Python.

By Deleted A

Jan 12, 2022

I understand each slide that the Professor mentioned, however when I tried to do the coding by myself, I had a hard time since the questions are in a paragraph, and writing the codes is a lot different compared with reading codes. Is it possible to dividing the coding assignments into several smaller sessions, which are ranked from the easiest to the hardest? This will help student have clear concepts. Thanks

By Nicola W

Jan 2, 2022

I felt like this course could benefit from more examples and course work. It would have been nice to have the professor explain a concept, then we have a few small homeworks after each. The pace of the course seemed off as well, it was very easy ands low for the first 3 weeks however from week4-7 it was warp speed. That being said, I really did love the professor, he was fun, engaging and passionate.

By Chris L

Feb 4, 2018

Videos are rambling at points. Also, the code assignments are 1 and done per week. This means they don't nicely build upon one another and that they can be pretty unforgiving if you aren't ready to spit out the culmination of the week's lecturers in 1 go. The course would be better with more focused lecturers and multiple short code assignments that build on one another.

By Jake A

Apr 12, 2023

The course is ok, but the jupitor notebook for practice is very sloppy and wasteful and cumbersome.The course couldve done way better with questions, exercises and practice that was cleaner and way more simple and helped you memorize things. Drilling the simple aspects of what you were learning wouldve made the course way better.

By Syed T H R

Sep 11, 2021

It is a good course but the assignments are not explained in a very good manner. The programming assignments tend to get difficult due to the questions asked which are not well explained and they are a lot difficult to execute. Teaching is good but the exercises should be explained much further.

By Tushar K

Jul 21, 2017

I feel that course should be split out for people with programming background and the first time Python programmers versus the first time programmers. There was too much repetition in some of the classes around basics of programming than python. Thanks!

By Daniel D

Jan 21, 2019

I work in lesson design and blended learning teacher training. I train teachers how to combine effective teaching practices with technology in K-8 classrooms. There is lots of room for improvement in this course. I would not recommend it to someone with no experience. I have no experience in coding, and did well in this course because I went to other sources to answer my questions and fill the knowledge gaps in this course. Though the instructor was great. He seems very passionate.

From a teaching/pedagogy standpoint the scope and sequence was poor. It went from extremely broad (defining computer parts) to hyper specific (defining variables in python) really quick. There was no information between on the practical pieces of what python is, what it looks like on our computer, and how we interact with it.

It feels like multiple people got together to build the course, but after it was finished they never came back to say “Here’s where we didn’t communicate, let’s edit these things.”

There is a HUGE disconnect between writing python programs and running them vs. running the actual python platform and typing commands line by line. The most frustrating thing was that every example in the course was given as a line of code in the python platform with the chevron prompt, and every single assignment was about writing a program in the text editor and the running the program. I didn’t realize these were two completely different things until about week 6. PLEASE ADDRESS THIS. Make it clear for future students that this is a thing. Go over how to use both, and the benefits and drawbacks of each. Make it clear that your examples are taking place in the command line python platform, but our homework is writing programs and saving and running them. I didn’t understand the use of the ‘type’ function until I realized this discrepancy. This was so confusing.

Some of the quiz questions were very specific questions that were mentioned for about a second or never explicitly made clear. Some of the ideas that were emphasized or mentioned multiple times in the same lecture video (seemed important) were never asked on the quiz. I can give examples of both.

I learned some stuff, but overall I would not recommend this course without pointing to the discrepancies. I would say there are multiple obvious areas for improvement and multiple gaps in knowledge that I filled from other sources. I could give more specific examples, but I feel like I already wrote quite a bit.

By Piotr B

Sep 6, 2020

To be honest, I thought the course stumbled and fell short. It was far too basic and slow paced. Considering how little is taught, even for a beginner's course in Python, it could hardly be described as college-level material.The tone was a bit immature at times, and perhaps appropriate for a grade school level classroom--not something for college students or working professionals. Even if the goal were to teach those having absolutely no programming experience, the course could accomplish that while providing more content by doing the following: keep up the pace of the lectures, give better (more relevant) coding examples, and remove the portions of the lectures that are irrelevant to the course objectives.Is the course worth the price? Hell no. If you do pay, you may feel very cheated at the end. The entire course can be reduced to 3 pages of notes. One would be better off checking into other free, online tutorials.I'm not sure about the value of all of the videos titled "Office Hours." They look like nothing more than self-promotional behavior from the professor, as if to say, "hey look how great I am making this irrelevant two-minute video in Paris." They're really nothing more than that.In one video, Severance corners a guest speaker at a conference, who appears annoyed after a few minutes and gives a polite brush-off: "other people here would like to speak with me too." It's obvious that Severance didn't set up the interview beforehand or warn the other person that he was going to be videotaped. Things like that make the professor look naive, unprepared, and unprofessional. After all of these videos, you will ask yourself, "okay, why did Severance make me watch that?" "What was the point?" And you'll shrug your shoulders and say, "gee, thanks for wasting my time … again."

By Josephine W

Sep 7, 2020

The teacher is likeable and the introductory videos really hooked me on the course. However, as a complete beginner, I was very put off by the way that the graded assignments had very little link to the content 'taught' in lectures. In fact, the lectures seem to ramble from one thing to another rather than having the teacher sit down and give step-by-step examples on how to code. Therefore, most of what I learnt was through the textbook that is provided for free anyway, so I may as well have taught a lot of it to myself. After the first few lectures, I stopped feeling as though I was being treated as a beginner, even though this is supposed to be 'Programming for Everybody'. Honestly, a bit of a let down.

By Lee D

Mar 27, 2017

This course is a first time programming class using Python. This is not what I was looking for. I wanted an introduction to Python for someone who knows a some programming already. Also, this teaches Python 2, which no longer cuts it, especially for an intro class where you'll be taking further work. It may have made sense when this class was done 3 years ago. It does not now.

The teacher was very lively and engaging, and I would enthusiastically recommend taking an online class with him, but the class is out of date and not what I was looking for.

By Ravi T K

Apr 2, 2018

This coursera team has given me a night mare today. The course is superb and the tutor is also very good. But the thing is regarding their prices. I purchased this entire course(5 courses) for 49$ initially. But later I thought of applying for the financial aid for the entire course. I applied and waited for 15 days to receive the status. After 15 days the financial aid is approved. After completing the first course in this 5 course part it is asking me to purchase another course for 79$. Team please remember one thing any one would apply for financial aid to seek help from you. Not to keep burden. I cannot apply for the financial aid again as I was in my last semester and I want to complete the course asap. Now I was in total confusion and they totally betrayed me. So the next four courses would cost me 79*4=316$ and my first price for all the 5 subcourses is 49$. Just compare yourself. This is totally unacceptable.

By seif e K

May 21, 2023

I really enjoyed the online course. I thought it was well planned and layed out, easy for me to follow. The work load(h.w. & test)was just enough, so i could finish everything with enough time, learn about the topics and not feel over loaded and rushed.Overall I really like this class because all lectures, assignments, and tests are straight forward. A couple things I dislike about the class are that there should be more opportunities for extra credit and it would be awesome if the final was an objective essay about what we have learned in this class or what we like about the class. I believe that I have more knowledge about ocean, weather, and marine lives and hopefully, I can use them in real life.The course was everything you said it would be, fun but a lot of work. And it was! I enjoyed the web-labs because they were a lot of fun and easy to understand. And the answers were usually somewhere in the text. I also liked the assignments that required us to get online. Sometimes articles aside from the reading book gave me a better idea and understanding of the subject for that week. What I disliked was the short essay question because I found it difficult to explain certain concepts without introducing in some way, Ideas from the course notes or book (keeping in mind plagiarism). I never expected to learn so much from an online class; I now see the ocean life in a whole new way. I know I could have done better, but in the end I learned that an online class could be as much work or more than a regular class. However, I still enjoyed it very much.I really enjoyed this class and the format it was presented in. For me, I learn and retain much more through an online class due to the fact you can do the course as an ¡§open book.¡¨ This really makes me search for the answer and in return, I retain more information. I found it relaxing to be able to turn the work on the assignments and test at my leisure and when I had the time. I liked the fact you were very clear that more internet research may be necessary for some assignments To be honest, there is nothing that I disliked about the course. I will definitely be taking another online course from you!To be honest , this was my first online class. I am looking forward to taking more online classes. The experience of this class has being nothing but positive. I thought the coarse outline/power point was extremely helpful. The homework, quizzes and test were reasonable. I would have enjoyed experiencing a field trip to Carlsbad or Oceanside, my only suggestion would be to have more days available for those who cannot make it on the specific time/day. Maybe a field trip later in the day? Or another weekend? I have to say this class made me more aware of current event dealing with the ocean and weather. I also did something for the first time as a north county resident, I participated in the annual grunion run in Carlsbad. Lots of fun!!! Enjoy the summer Mr.T.I really liked learning about the tide pools and local labs. Originally I enrolled in this class because I am not from CA or even a coastal areas ( I am from WI) so I thought it would be good to learn a little about the waves, swells and currents as I venture into the water a little more the longer I have lived here. I had no idea the depth of the earth’s oceans or the importance of them. I really liked the online option of this class because I am a very busy person (2 jobs and college). The only thing that was a little confusing at first was all the different resources. In the beginning I had a hard time finding the answers to questions because I wasn’t sure where to look. The book, Notes, PowerPoint presentations, web-labs, the cd with the book… Just was a little much but as the semester progressed I got the feel of it and benefited from all the information

By ABIRAMI.S

May 5, 2021

The instructor is awesome and the designing of course is fabulous and super easy to understand. I found this course great. I will suggest who want to learn Python Must must take this Course. It will help you lot and clear all your basics.I refer all my beloved friends and juniors to take this course. ...........................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................THANK YOU

By Monika M

Sep 29, 2023

Programming for Everybody( PY4E) is a must for those who are really starting their journey in Python and AI for that matter. I had already finished one course for beginners on a different platform and came out of it still very confused as well as discouraged, I had managed to write the 'Hello World" code and that was about it. After some research, it was clear to me that this course (PY4E) is the best choice for a total beginner, I was so hopeful and oh my! This course exceeded my expectations. Things make sense to me and when starting this course I was just amazed at how excellent the professor is. Lessons are nicely divided into chunkable sections and explained below. You literally feel as if the professor is talking to you, and there is this natural real-life vibe with some giggles too! Hats down Professor Chuk! I have done a lot of courses in my life and this is by far THE BEST one! Also, I have some financial issues, and looking for self-studying for free was very challenging as there is no structure. Coursera helped me with financial Aid which means I will be able to get the certificate that I could then present to my future employer. I am so happy I have found this course! The best part is... I can't wait for the next morning to keep learning and doing assignments. I can actually write some basic codes and I UNDERSTAND it! Priceless for me! Thank you from the bottom of my heart !!!! Programming for Everybody( PY4E) is a must for those who are really starting their journey in Python and AI for that matter. I had already finished one course for beginners on a different platform and came out of it still very confused as well as discouraged, I had managed to write the 'Hello World" code and that was about it. After some research, it was clear to me that this course (PY4E) is the best choice for a total beginner, I was so hopeful and oh my! This course exceeded my expectations. Things make sense to me and when starting this course I was just amazed at how excellent the professor is. Lessons are nicely divided into chunkable sections and explained below. You literally feel as if the professor is talking to you, and there is this natural real-life vibe with some giggles too! Hats down Professor Chuk! I have done a lot of courses in my life and this is by far THE BEST one! Also, I have some financial issues, and looking for self-studying for free was very challenging as there is no structure. Coursera helped me with financial Aid which means I will be able to get the certificate that I could then present to my future employer. I am so happy I have found this course! The best part is... I can't wait for the next morning to keep learning and doing assignments. I can actually write some basic codes and I UNDERSTAND it! Priceless for me! Thank you from the bottom of my heart !!!!