Computer Science: Programming with a Purpose

This course is much more than fantastic! Professor Robert is one of the best teachers. I am so lucky to have a chance to learn those great materials. For me, the meaning of completing this course is way beyond the course itself. I am a CS graduate more than 15 years ago, and I've done some computer engineering work for a while. Then I took a different path other than software engineer, because at some point my interest is on other things. What I did after software engineering are financial analysis, business analysis and data analysis. Nowadays, I am doing data analytics as my daily work. But as time passed by, I found programming is way fun than I thought before, and that's my real passion. So I decided to come back to software engineering field. But it's difficult, very very difficult, for companies accepting me as software engineer again. I don't know whether taking those CS courses and refreshing my knowledge will lead to the place where I want to be. But again, that's my interest and real passion. I just love programming. I really really want to thank Professor Robert for his fantastic courses (his other courses are also great), which built up my confidence and gave me challenges and fun!

It's a prefect starting point for those who want to learn programming or those who wants to refresh their knowledge.

elegant.

The course is awesome. It really teaches me the basics of Java programming. Now I know what an object is. The programming assignments are very interesting and really make you think. I like them very much.

very very helpful for beginners

This course was incredibly helpful. I've taught myself Python over the years for data analysis purposes, but I never had a solid understanding of computer science principles like you learn in this course. Learning Java along the way was a nice bonus, and it was helpful to compare and understand differences across different languages. The projects were of an appropriate difficulty, and I would strongly recommend completing them so that you can practice what you learn.

This is one of the best courses I had ever had.

I liked this course very much. Good materials and perfect lecturers. Good structured and well explained material and interesting exercises ranging from very beginner to challenging.

I was a total and utter programming newbie (a smidge of self-taught Python, and that's it). I cannot BELIEVE what I can do now in Java. This course takes a LOT OF PATIENCE and tons, I mean TONS of perseverance. Google and Stack Overflow will be your new best friends as you try to piece together what to do at times. But it's amazing what you learn if you stick with it. Interesting topics, and good lectures, helpful readings, and the programs you write are really challenging and cool. I can't wait to take the second one!

fun homework assignments that keep me motivated to write efficient code

Excellent course, Thank you Drs Sedgwick and Wayne. That said, this is not a beginners course: the assignments are not easy, but they teach you a great deal; there is very little 'hand-holding' and you can expect to spend a good bit of time on Wikipedia in order to understand what you are trying to do before you get to writing any code. That is when you learn what the word 'Purpose' means in the title - many subject area are covered in the practice code assignments i.e. real world examples. Also, it is easy to get to a (frustrating) place where your programs work on everything but the auto-grader(A-G), and A-G feedback is sparse. Be sure to look at the exercises in the online book as there are many program examples/solutions that teach you a lot of programming techniques often useful in completing the practice programming assignments.

Awesome course. Very challenging even for experienced programmer. Prof. Sedgewick and Kevin Wayne do a great job.