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Learner Reviews & Feedback for Principles of Computing (Part 2) by Rice University

4.8
stars
362 ratings

About the Course

This two-part course introduces the basic mathematical and programming principles that underlie much of Computer Science. Understanding these principles is crucial to the process of creating efficient and well-structured solutions for computational problems. To get hands-on experience working with these concepts, we will use the Python programming language. The main focus of the class will be weekly mini-projects that build upon the mathematical and programming principles that are taught in the class. To keep the class fun and engaging, many of the projects will involve working with strategy-based games. In part 2 of this course, the programming portion of the class will focus on concepts such as recursion, assertions, and invariants. The mathematical portion of the class will focus on searching, sorting, and recursive data structures. Upon completing this course, you will have a solid foundation in the principles of computation and programming. This will prepare you for the next course in the specialization, which will begin to introduce a structured approach to developing and analyzing algorithms. Developing such algorithmic thinking skills will be critical to writing large scale software and solving real world computational problems....

Top reviews

IB

Jun 11, 2017

Phew, this course was much harder than the preceding courses. Some assignments took many hours of work over several days. But it's doable, and well worth it.

RL

Jun 29, 2020

Interesting, but challenging course. Some weeks might take longer than a week, but don't give up. If you pull through, you have accomplished quite a lot.

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26 - 50 of 57 Reviews for Principles of Computing (Part 2)

By DAVID P P

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Apr 30, 2017

Very challenging projects and a very interesting way to learn about data structures. Lecturers are really great

By Tobias R

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Dec 9, 2020

Challenging, but I learned so much.

Great staff, it is fun and absolutely worthwhile.

Thank You :-)

By Hector G S G

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Aug 4, 2022

Great course! It really helps you to stretch your limits and makes you become better at coding!

By Jayadev H

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Jun 5, 2018

wonderfully fun assignments!:)

Last one is killer... hardest one I faced on Coursera!:)

By Guanyu B

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Oct 4, 2020

This course is perfect. It helped me to step into Python in a very interesting way.

By Siwei L

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Dec 9, 2017

very helpful course, the projects are challenging but interesting to work on!

By wangcai z

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Feb 26, 2017

it's great!. The assignments are very interesting!!!I love this course!

By Ken

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Dec 12, 2017

great course - really gets you thinking about coding efficiently

By RAVI R

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Jul 2, 2017

Must have course to build foundation on computational thinking.

By Jaehwi C

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Nov 4, 2017

The best course to study computer science for beginner!

By ravindranadh g

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Apr 17, 2017

excellent course to improve logic skills of programming

By Tom S

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Jan 16, 2018

Very enlightening. Excellent assistance from staff.

By Dinghan X

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Feb 7, 2019

the last week is really challenging but l like it

By Albert C G

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Oct 17, 2017

Great Course - learned a lot - Great Projects

By A&Tower

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May 17, 2016

I love you teaching staffs!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

By zhengyu t

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Sep 14, 2021

Tough yet rewarding course

By Arthur-Lance

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Jun 22, 2017

i feel powerful !!! :)

By James T B

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Aug 21, 2019

Great course!

By Ganapathi N K

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Nov 11, 2017

Mind blowing

By Matteo B

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Aug 28, 2017

Nice course.

By Jon Z

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Feb 11, 2017

buja!

By Arjun K B

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Feb 25, 2020

Excellent course and challenging assignments. Learnt a lot!

Something which I did not like was CodeSkulptor, which is substandard for somebody used to running full-fledged editors like VSCode/Atom. Also, the editor was relatively tiny on the browser on my smallish laptop screen.

I understand that a lot of people are new to computer science and python, and might find it hard to set up a local development environment on their machines, but forcing the rest of us to use CodeSkulptor was a turn-off.

Even if I copy over the starter code, there would still be other classes used within it whose implementations I would not have.

Other than that, I really enjoyed the course. Keep up the excellent standards!

By Steven K

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Oct 3, 2019

Very good course, especially the lessons on recursion and breadth-first searching. Lessons were very good and quizzes really served to reinforce material. Projects in this course were much more challenging than previous ones.

Final project (15 puzzle) was very frustrating and didn't seem designed to teach as many skills as previous projects; just seemed like it was designed to be complicated and difficult because it was the last project.

By Kelly G

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Dec 22, 2018

Overall a great course, with a few glitches: 1. The tests for the homework are not working properly. 2. The amount of homework is a bit overwhelming for an introductory course.

By Michael B R

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Oct 14, 2017

Great course, but the final project in W4 is very long compared the rest of the projects in this series of courses. Content is still top notch though.