QUORA
Thanks for the question. I'd taken CS 50 around five years ago. The skeleton still seems similar although it's moved beyond Harvard now and into Yale too.So, CS 50 is broad. It covers a lot of ground and one gets an overall idea of what's possible and happening in CS today. The scope of the final project is huge, I designed an application that checked and optimised stock prices. You could do a lot more, like if you bought some hardware , like Google glass or leap, you could reprogramme them as per your utility.I did do MIT 6.001 intro to CS with python too. That's in some sense, a no nonsense course. You get to learn the most popular language, python, at a very authentic computer scientists' level. You'll learn oop, a little complexity, searching sorting, and much more. Sure, the professors are less interesting, in the sense they're not as dramatic as David Malan and might not go to his extent to make things clear, but Eric and John are exceptional teachers and the concepts they teach are crystal clear. After taking this course you can try actual computer science courses, like algorithm and then automata.Hence, if you want a good overview of CS, go for CS 50. If you want to learn beyond basic programming too, like maybe want to venture into data science or computer science, go for MIT's course.If you've time, do both, first CS 50 and then MIT.Good luck.
I have done both 6.00.1x and 6.00.2x They are goth great, hard, hard work, and I recommend them. I have not done CS50 - only the first 1/12th, yet I am seriously considering it (to have the most solid introduction to CS possible). They both provide an introduction to computer science (CS). In my view, there are two things to consider. Content and deadlines.
If you want to learn Python, or if you need deadlines to sustain performance, go with the MIT course(s). They won’t distract you with anything else except Python and some Python-based big data tools in the second MOOC. Do both of them if you can. Python used not to be covered in CS50, but since about 2018 it is. If you want some web development, namely JavaScript (JS), go with the Harvard course (you will certainly not find webdev in the MIT course). Harvard’s Malan teaches HTML, CSS, JS, C, Python and ends with Python-based web dev mini framework Flask. (They dropped PHP in the same year. Yet, given the orientation of CS50 you will hear about it in there.)
My final note will be about deadlines. People who miss study skills might find out the 6.00.1x whizzed away (there are two instances of 6.00.1x & 6.00.2x duo a year); each instance of the course(s) has deadlines (for example every Wendesday) and you need to do a good job organization-wise. My initial trouble was the course whizzed away, but I easily took the very next iteration and finished it very very well. As well as the time-wise immediate follow-up - 6.00.2x. Actually, the deadlines are another plus of the MIT courses over Harvard’s CS50. As far as I am concerned.
CS50 has one deadline, Dec 31 every year, and even that might be flexible as one can transfer the parts finished for example in 2018 ahead to the 2019 instance. I found I would appreciate more frequent deadlines to gear in this course optimally; lack of deadlines perhaps works OK for real good planners, yet have been a hindrance for me.
If you go for any of the two, remember. (1) Get involved with your classmates inside the course, plus definitely over Facebook or whatever social platform, short of cheating. That will prevent your propensity to give up (if you are a rookie), or will help you to forge friendships or collegiate relationships. (2) If you will have some time to read (I had), I appreciated the textbook (prof. Guttag’s in case of the MITx courses).
I completed MIT 6.00.1x Introduction to computer science programming using python last year. This year I took cs50 and cs101.1x on edx. I did Cs50 till pset5 and I am on it to continue further psets. So I will try to answer your question.
Coming to the first course that I took i.e MIT 6.00.1x .
- I took this course when I was in second year , so I was little bit familiar with the coding. I absolutely loved this course. The professors are top-notch. The thing I liked about it was that after watching a video lecture of (10–15 minutes mostly) you will be given an exercise (finger exercises as they are called in the course) to solve right after watching the lecture. So you will dive into the code right after it ,this is very helpful as you will implement what you have learnt just now. Secondly the lectures are detailed and as per the course no programming book is required for this course (but it strictly follows a book written by one of the professors of the course) some may find it great as some people prefer to learn by just by watching the lectures. And the finger exercises will help to improve your program solving capability. After the lectures you will be given psets to solve that will further help you to push yourself. Another thing is that since this course is not self paced unlike CS50 ,time commitment is on higher side . It requires more time. Being a non-self-paced course and psets bounded by the deadline one may find it difficult to handle it along with other commitments. I personally struggled a lot completing this course along with my college studies. Some people leave the course before finishing it because
- This course is available twice a year and are not available during the summer/winte vacations in which the students have ample of time . Even the current offering of this course is starting in August. Like I said , it sometimes become difficult to dedicate time to it. Although the archived version of course is available but it defeats the purpose of non-self-paced course.
- Sometimes when you complete the week’s material before the end of the week you will have to wait for other week’s material to be released. Student have to unwilling wait for the release as you can’t access the next week’s material right after it.
All in all this is a very good course if you can dedicate enough time to it and complete all the psets/quizzes before deadline. The learning curve is steep and it keeps you on your toes. You will have no problem with the teaching style of professors and other things.
- Second course CS50x .
Since I have completed it till week6 (60% of the course) I will write about it till what I have felt till week 6. It is the biggest online course on edx. This probably is the closest one can ever get to the hallowed halls of an Ivy League Institution virtually. It feels like you have stepped into the live classroom. This course is very well structured. Professor David J Malan is one of the best professors I have ever seen. His way of teaching will keep you engaged throughout the course . Most importantly this class is fun, I cannot underestimate this part, unlike other online courses’s lecture where one may feel bored after watching 20–30 min video. Cs50’s lectures will have you completely engrossed in it till the end and the ending music after the lectures further pumps you up. The teaching style is phenomenal , professor uses live example to demonstrate a concept. The shorts(lectures ) are very good. The best thing about it is that it is self paced and doable. Can be managed with other commitments because the only true deadline is the last date of the course. All problem sets, quizzes and the project can be submitted any time at all. Plus they have a simple schedule which is based on the date you have logged in suggests various dates for all the items that you need to submit. It teaches many technologies with C like HTML 5 ,CSS3, php, JavaScript ,little bit of mySQL and many other things. It tries to teach many things in one course and is successful in doing so. The problem sets are fun to do and it has a great student community always willing to help. You will never feel you are stuck in it without any help.
Definitely CS50. It covers a lot of materials in exciting ways. You will be not only taught how to program in some programming languages such as C and PHP and others... but you also learn how to have fun programming. Besides just programming, CS50 also teaches you to set up virtual machines, how to get familiar with command-line commands, web programming, computer architecture, etc... You won't be overwhelmed, there are short videos and recitations that are made by the staff. The pace is appropriate for students at all levels. The problem sets are engaging and help you learn a lot. The lecture videos are interesting and exciting.
I'm taking both classes. And I have to say MITx 6 is ok. It is dry and boring. They focus too much on the mechanical stuff of Python and programming. I think the title should be "Intro to Python programming". The lecture videos instead of showing how it works just show you slides and some parts of the code demo. As the course dives into more CS topics, I would say it would get complete beginners confused. I mean who teaches semantics and ALU to beginners at the first lecture? :).
In my opinion, CS50 is more well structured and well taught. I have learned more from this course than my original Intro to CS course at my university.
So I highly recommend CS50. Period. Anyway, I feel bad to downgrade MIT 6. But I do appreciate the hard work they put into the course. It can be a good companion course for those taking CS50.
Both are great! 6.00.1x uses Python as it's language of instruction; CS50 uses C (at least, this was the case when I took them a few years back). With minimal programming experience, they will both be very challenging. I've actually started each and then stopped, and then started again several times. Don't rush through the course! Take your time; give yourself ample time to process all the lecture material. Both courses do a great job teaching you how to 'think' programmatically, which can be a challenge for a lot of people.
As a final thought, I'd recommend auditing the course (taking it for free) as opposed to paying for the certification. I'm not sure the cert would do much for you in the real world. Some will say paying for the course is a great way to stay motivated. In my case, I didn't finish the first time I started, so I was glad I didn't shell out the money. For me personally, money alone is not motivation enough to keep plugging through a challenging course; rather, a willingness to learn something difficult but very cool is what motivates me most.
Whoops, sorry, one more thought: the mistake I made early on was thinking I needed to learn every programming language under the sun. This is NOT the case; in fact, I found this hindered my learning significantly: as soon as I started getting comfortable learning C, I'd switch to Python; once I learned the basics there, I switched to Ruby; then I wanted to build iOS Apps, so I tried Swift; then I wanted to be a strong Web Developer, so I tried JavaScript, etc.
The vast majority of online programming/CS courses follow the same exact structure. You learn the foundations of the language (syntax, variables, loops, etc), and then you apply it to a project (e.g. Fizz Buzz, write a function that does X,Y,Z, etc). By jumping from language to language, you do yourself a disservice by only giving yourself a very shallow understanding of the language. Who cares that I can declare variables in Python, Ruby, or C? who cares that I know how to write loops in 5 different languages? If I'm not immersing myself in a language, if I'm not learning the nitty-gritty mechanics of how things work (and, crucially, WHY they work the way they do), then I'm not really learning the language at all.
So my advice to you would be this: whether it's better to take CS50 over 6.00.1x is not as important as you might think. Both will teach you about the fundamentals of computer programming (albeit with different languages and lessons). With a solid foundation, you can later learn new languages or technologies. It's true that some languages are better suited for different tasks; however, if you're just starting out, these differences are not significant. So stick with a foundational course and do your damn best to finish it completely (it's okay if you don't on the first go!). Stick with ONE language while you get your feet wet. Build a solid understanding of the foundations, and you will quickly find yourself making strides in your future learning.
I found CS50 to be a lot more challenging and rewarding than 6.00.1x, for the following reasons:
- CS50 is longer than 6.00.1x and teaches more material (12 weeks vs 7)
- The instructor for CS50, David Malan, is much more energetic and enthusiastic than Eric Grimson, the prof for 6.00.1x
- The problem sets for CS50 force you to learn things on your own in order to complete them, whereas the problems for 6.00.1x are much more contained. The ability to learn things on your own by googling and reading documentation is really important for programming.
- CS50 teaches C, a low level language in the beginning, and then switches gears to high level languages like Python/PHP (when I took it) and JavaScript, whereas 6.00.1x only teaches Python. After using C, you'd be amazed by a lot of the build-in functionality that comes with Python, but at the same time appreciate why a low level language like C continues to exist and dominate in certain fields
- Plus, a lot of popular languages have C-inspired syntax (Java, C++, C#, etc) so you might have an easier time learning those as opposed to coming from Python (though having Python as a 1st language would not limit your learning in any way, it'll just take you some time to get used to using parentheses and curly braces as opposed to indentation)
You can certainly take both (I have), but honestly, taking 6.00.1x after CS50 is redundant in my opinion.
As someone who has taken both, CS50 all the way. I took 6.00.1x to get back into programming after taking a year and a half off after high school (I taught myself Supercollider and Python using documentation and trial and error). I already knew Python but wasn't very good at thinking programmatically. In my opinion, the tests and assignments in 6.00.1x were too easy and too memorization based. I learned significantly more when I took CS50, I feel like learning with C covers a much larger foundation and you learn more about memory and what higher level code actually does under the hood. You can leverage what you know in C to start learning C++ too, it really helped me along that path. Learning things yourself is a huge part of programming and CS50 embraces that fully, where as 6.00.1x provides you with all of the necessary information and concepts to complete the tests. Personally, if I could do it over, I'd take CS50 first; then 6.00.1x.
VERDICT
- Which of them takes more time?
- Which is more practical in real life?
- Which has the best teacher?
- What do you recommend?
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