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Learner Reviews & Feedback for Introduction to Python Programming by University of Pennsylvania

4.5
stars
1,046 ratings

About the Course

This course provides an introduction to programming and the Python language. Students are introduced to core programming concepts like data structures, conditionals, loops, variables, and functions. This course includes an overview of the various tools available for writing and running Python, and gets students coding quickly. It also provides hands-on coding exercises using commonly used data structures, writing custom functions, and reading and writing to files. This course may be more robust than some other introductory python courses, as it delves deeper into certain essential programming topics....

Top reviews

IN

Jun 29, 2023

All the contents are expressed direct and clear and no previous experience is needed, that's why I really enjoy this course. I would like to also understand Python comprehension lists in this course.

SB

Mar 26, 2021

Great explanations and lots of examples to follow on. The course built throughout so I had confidence in completing assignments though they were not easy. Great interaction in discussion forums.

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26 - 50 of 302 Reviews for Introduction to Python Programming

By Krisana C

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Aug 12, 2021

I've just finished the course without prior background to coding. This course provide you basic of the Python. It's not going to be easy but it's not possible to finish! Please bear in mind that this will require you to invest time. I believe that there is always room for improvement in this course to deliver a better education to current and future students.

If this is your first time as well, prepare yourself to be frustrated and helpless. But, as the course has been opened for a while, major and minor alteration to the course has been made to help students finish it more easily.

A regard of appreciation to the help from TAs especially Jahnavi Chowdary.

By Anna C

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Jan 21, 2021

As someone with a background in Economics and with experience with STATA I found this to be a helpful introduction to Python. The last assignment took long to complete but I was amazed to see in the end what I could program after only a few weeks of learning.

By George S

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Mar 29, 2022

Just ok. Too "cram-school", quality can't let me link to this prestigious institute; every video lasts ~ 1 minute flying through, ending before you know it; teaching quality is so-so due to the haste of speech, can't really learn anything from the teaching; and howework can only partially reflect what he taught and can be hectic and eating lots of time if you must find clue elsewhere; grading program also not robust and user-friendly; and didn't get the feeling the homework is representitive of reality's need, just playing around tricks and can be time consuming ( even to a degree of feeling waste of time for a full-time worker), giving headache in unneessary tricky points. Better to enroll in courses taught by professors or industry-experienced professionels, who know how to teach efficiently. Will drop the course. The above is said by a person with engineering background and graduate degree who wants to brush up on programming.

By An T

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Jan 20, 2021

I'm glad that I decided to pay for this course. The assignments were practical and covered all the content in the lectures thoroughly. The assignments and quizzes were good opportunities to review what you've learned. The level of difficulty of the assignments increase overtime. Still, I hope that there will be instructions included on how to read errors in test cells and good debugging practices. The last assignment was especially challenging as I don't know how to properly run the program in PyCharm and test my results. The errors in the test cells were difficult to help me understand where I did wrong. And replies from staff in the discussion forum are relatively slow so it wasn't very helpful.

By Arthur C

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May 16, 2021

I considered this couse because of Penn's reputation. Since this is a subset of the Introduction to Python and Java course, they only do things that are complementary in both languages. As an example, they always use for loops instead of teaching about list iterators. This does not give you a full flavor for Python. Also, the toolsets are a little outdated. If you are teaching a course on Java and Pythion, you probably should be using a tool like VSCode to be doing all the code by examples.

Final evaluation project had two bugs in the assignments. For example, the description for the change_password function has the following "The user is logged in (the username is associated with the value False in the log_in dictionary)". The only way to get the assignment to Succeed was to test for True, not False". Also had a bug on the delete_account tests.

I have to recommend that if you are serious about learning Python, you should consider other courses more directly focused on Python and its nuances.

By Josephine L

•

Apr 29, 2022

Not beginner friendly. Assignments are too difficult with the given course.

By MOHAMMED S A

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Apr 11, 2022

The worst course I have ever seen. First of all this course is not for beginners because it only teaches abot the abc's of python and expects us to score 60%+ in therir so called beginner level assignments whcih are based on some concepts not taught in this course. And worst of all this course has their integrated IDE called Jupyter Notebook which is worst of all becase you don't have the freedom to write the code wherever you want.

This course needs to be improved by adding detailed lectures on more topics and testing participants only and only on what the course has taught them so far.

Tata byby khatm gya Good bye

By Mia B

•

May 12, 2022

Not beginner friendly. I just canceled my subscription for this reason. I am a complete beginner and this is not for people like me. Save your time and money if you are new to python.

By Hrishika D

•

Feb 12, 2022

bahut hi chutiya course with 3 others<3

By Jahwize M

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Nov 1, 2021

This course was a good introduction to many of the principals and methods fundamental to Python programming. It moves at a quick pace and covers a lot of ground, and the homeworks/tests are particularly challenging. But due to this, it makes it essential to have a complete understanding of the concepts from the corresponding module. Expect a challenge on the homeworks, but reviewing videos and notes will highlight all the principles necessary to complete them. Overall, great course.

By Ryan M

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May 30, 2021

The videos and level of instruction is super high-quality in this course. It could be that I really connect with Brandon's teaching style, or perhaps I'm simply pleased with the ability to repeat complex topics and explore in secondary sources when something doesn't quite make sense, or I simply want to know more. The homework is definitely challenging. Stick with it though and you'll figure it out!

By murrai s

•

Feb 8, 2021

This was a great course! Scope, sequence, and pacing is perfect. The project at the end of week four wrapped everything together wonderfully and gave me just the right amount of practice to really understand some of the tricky parts of Python dictionaries. Jupyter was great in the beginning, but very unpleasant during the online banking assignment.

By Robert P

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Aug 8, 2021

The course demands and is designed for thinking. It teaches you the basics of Python. There is only so much the videos tell you, so you have to figure out the rest. That's an aptitude, key to success in any subject, especially in STEM. So overall it is done well and is a good preparation for these demanding subjects.

By David S

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Nov 14, 2021

I really liked the fact that the videos were short --some less than 60 seconds, most only a few minutes and the longest at about 12 minutes. The real learning happens in the code-along exercises and the assignments. The assessment tools worked well, and the discussion forums cleared up any points of confusion.

By Yukio I

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Aug 15, 2021

Although I had basic understanding of Python syntax that I learned from books and other online learning platforms, I found each course video helpful and each week assignment challenging. This course really helped me gain my confidence in my ability and made me feel hone my skills stronger than before.

By Sukhmanpreet S

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Jul 30, 2021

Great course that will give you a working knowledge of handling data structures like strings, lists, sets, and dictionaries in Python (and incorporating them in loops/statements). The last homework was quite challenging and will make you appreciate how much coding skills you have acquired by the end.

By Elias K

•

Mar 9, 2021

A great starting point for someone who is beginning to learn to code. I recommend it to everyone also who works in a scientific field because having a piece of basic knowledge in coding is today a requirement in almost every place of work. Very clear explanations in videos and readings.

By SUYASH B

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Jul 19, 2021

The course is nicely structured and gives the students a broad understanding of the common data stuctures used in python. The final homework (#4) is challenging but its really helpful in building a strong base for the concepts of programming.

Overall I would give this course a 4.7/5.0

By Aditya D

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Aug 26, 2022

The course was extremely entertaining and informative. The concepts and code files were great. Discussions and helps on the homework were provided in a great manner. Recommend the course.

By Kasra G

•

Jan 13, 2023

I had issues with the last module but overall this course does a great job of teaching the fundamentals of Python programming.

By KL G

•

Mar 2, 2021

Thank you Sir and Thank You Jhanvi for helping. This is wonderful and helped me learn a lot.

By Rhone G

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Jul 24, 2022

It was a good refresher for me for the first 3 weeks and I learned a lot of new information about files in the last week. However, I do believe there could have been a little more homework help in the form of either pseudo code or videos of something similar to the problem but I understand they want the user to extrapolate. I do want to say that the staff did do a good job of responding to questions so hats off to them. Overall a good and informative course.

By Christopher B ( B

•

May 29, 2023

Pros:

I learned some Python.

Cons:

I found the constant 15 seconds to 1 minute 15 second long videos really annoying. Just put them together in a 3 minute long video. Why even bother with something 15-60 seconds long having its own video with an intro? Doesn't coding require more than 20 seconds of focus at a time?

With the tests, I ran into issues where I could make my own code that did everything properly and would produce the required results if I ran it outside of the test environment. However, the test would not accept it as correct. I had a friend who codes Python for a living check my code and look at the test. He checked my code multiple times and said everything is correct and runs and produces the expected results independently. This may be an issue with the test environment.

In summary, I probably won't finish the 3 other classes in this series and I'll loo for another python course.

By Robert C

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Jun 25, 2022

Frustratingly basic course. Teaching style is unengaging and sounds more like someone is reading a manual of examples rather than explaining a complex topic and how it links into the IT field as a whole, or even why a learner should be interested in Python in the first place. Examples used as intro to python are very repetitive with constant rehashing of calculator logics and how to do these calculations in python, but zero focus on why the learner should remember these functions, what they pertain to in the field of coding and when to use them in the future. Due to the monotonous and unengaging manner of teaching this does not seem like an effective course to learn from for beginners or users who don't already have an understanding of the functions of these coding languages.

By L L

•

Oct 25, 2022

I personally find that Brandon touches essential points very precisely and his lecture is more attractive compared to the other courses I took previously. Although the forth homework project was big jump, I learned a lot by debugging, testing, and practising.

also, the staffs in the discussion forums are really responsive and helpful.

overall, this lecture is perfect for someone has computational thinking or basic knowledge as Brandon mentioned in the beginning. Therefore, Brandon's precisely points save me a lot of time from repeating what I know already.

for students who has never touched computer language, it may be challenging and require lots of additional time to do research.