Udacity CS101

Decided to get back into learning mode after being lazy for half of the year. This time, I'm learning a new programming language just for fun.

Late last year I completed the A.I. class offered by Dr. Sebastian Thrun and Dr. Peter Norvig, so it was natural to check Udacity for their course offerings. Since most of the classes offered at Udacity use Python, and because I haven't been exposed to the language in the past, I decided to start with CS101 to get a feel for the language, before moving to the more advanced courses.

After 4 weeks, I'm in unit 5 having completed all the exercise that accompany each unit, and also the extra practice material that was recently added. So far I'm very impressed with the quality of the class, and it probably does a better job as an introduction to Computer Science than some of the introductory classes I took in college.

In the short 7 weeks that the class is designed to take, the student is introduced to non-trivial problem solving with Python. You get to program a very rudimentary search engine, and most importantly, you are briefly introduced to quite a few C.S. fundamentals.

Overall, I give the course my highest recommendation. It is my belief that it would be especially useful to high school students who are thinking about majoring in Computer Science, but haven't been exposed to the field before.