what is the cs50 course everyone is talking about

by Cornelius Schaden Sr. 9 min read

Is CS50 a useful course?

Sorry for the long summary, to summarise it: CS50 is a very useful course, but it has to be used with a bit of common sense if you don’t have Harvard there to support you when you struggle. *UPDATE! As of 2020, and probably long before, Python is used along with SQL after C. What are the biggest money secrets that rich people keep from us?

Should I take CS50 at Harvard?

No other CS class at Harvard tries to be this glamorous. You'll still have problem sets that will make you lose sleep and possibly want to cry, but there won't be singing and dancing and candy to console you like there was in CS50 (okay, slight exaggeration).

How is CCS50 graded?

CS50 is ordinarily graded SAT/UNS, though students whose concentration requires letter grades should change their grading status to letter-graded by the term’s fifth Monday.

What is the spring version of CS50?

This spring version of CS50 is for SEAS concentrators (or secondaries) who were unable to take the course in Fall 2020. All students, including concentrators and non-concentrators, are encouraged to take CS50 in fall term instead. See cs50.harvard.edu/spring for differences between fall term and spring term.

What are the recordings of CS50?

Harvard plans to record audio, photos, and video of Computer Science 50 (CS50) lectures, sections, office hours, seminars, and other events and activities related to CS50 (the “Recordings”), with the aims of making the content of the course more widely available and contributing to public understanding of innovative learning (the “Projects”). As part of the Projects, the Recordings, or edited versions of them, may be made available to other Harvard students, to students at other educational institutions, and to the broader public via edX, the Internet, television, theatrical distribution, digital media, or other means. One of the ways it is expected that the Recordings, or edited versions of them, will be made publicly available is under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike (CC BY-NC-SA) license. Another example is that Harvard may make and disseminate montages of “memories” from the class with images from the Recordings. The Recordings also may be used to make other derivative works in the future. Students may elect not to appear in photos and video used in the Projects and may still participate fully in CS50.

What does "besides the course's heads" mean?

Turning to humans (besides the course’s heads) for help or receiving help from humans (besides the course’s heads) during the quizzes or test. Viewing another’s solution to a problem set’s problem and basing your own solution on it. Viewing the solution to a lab before trying to solve it yourself.

What is a quiz?

Quizzes are short assignments due after each lecture that allow you to apply each week’s concepts to new problems . Each quiz is open-book: you may use any and all non-human resources during a quiz, but the only humans to whom you may turn for help or from whom you may receive help are the course’s heads.

What is the philosophy of academic honesty?

The course’s philosophy on academic honesty is best stated as “be reasonable.” The course recognizes that interactions with classmates and others can facilitate mastery of the course’s material. However, there remains a line between enlisting the help of another and submitting the work of another. This policy characterizes both sides of that line.

How many students can be involved in a one person project?

A one-person project, mind you, should entail more time and effort than is required by each of the course’s problem sets. Although no more than three students may design and implement a given project, you are welcome to solicit advice from others, so long as you respect the course’s policy on academic honesty.

Is CS50 a good indicator of standing?

Scores are normalized across teaching fellows and comfort levels at term’s end, so mid-semester comparisons among students of scores are not reliable indicators of standing. Know that CS50 draws quite the spectrum of students, including “those less comfortable,” “those more comfortable,” and those somewhere in between.

How many students feel comfortable taking CS50?

According to a survey taken of students enrolled in CS50, only about 10% felt "more than comfortable" taking an introductory computer science class. The rest felt either "less than comfortable" or fell somewhere in the middle.

How did Malan introduce students to the concept of algorithms?

Malan introduced students to the concept of algorithms by introducing a problem: How do we figure out how many people are in the lecture hall? While counting people individually or by 2's would eventually lead us to a final number, it would take a very long time — much longer than it would take for an algorithm to do the work for us. Taking steps 1-5 as one complete step, Malan shows how using an algorithm it only takes 8-9 "steps" to count 400 people.

Why is Malan so popular?

Malan is wildly popular because he has figured out how to make computer science fun. More importantly, he's figured out how to make it easy. Here are some of the highlights and takeaways from Malan's introductory lecture: You can use algorithms to make huge problems really small. Harvard.

What is an RSS feed?

Malan then moved on to explain what an RSS Feed is, using the wildly popular meme Lolcats. "An RSS feed is basically just a big text file that has a lot of links ," Malan said.

What is CS50 in school?

CS50 is a perfect way to start the basics of computing. Being a 9th class student, you have ample time to learn and turn that knowledge to something more productive. So, go ahead, make that happen, take up CS50. There is a huge CS50 community and whenever you get stuck, you can always ask the fellow students.

Is MOOCs a complete CS?

It is, effectively, a complete CS education in a nutshell. If you have time for more than that in terms of MOOCs, by all means take it. And whenever you get stuck, either take another course or just take what you’ve learned and solve your own problems with what you know so far.

Is CS50 a good course?

CS50 on EdX is an excellent course, but it is effectively three courses in one in a slightly non-traditional MOOC style, so how useful it is to you depends on how you use it. Do not expect to complete a “week” of the course every week if starting from scratch.

Is CS50 the end of computer science?

Of course not; even students with the same background have varying degrees of understanding/experience after CS50, so it will be easier for some than others. CS50 certainly isn't the end of any computer science education, so the best thing you can do after CS50 is continue it. Go make something. Related Answer.

Does the job search make anyone else want to cry?

I just got like my 15h rejection in a row, this time with feedback on a hackerrank that said "Our engineering leadership thought that your HackerRank solution was a bit convoluted and not what we are looking for currently." Except that I know I'm a good engineer and my solution was not at all convoluted.

Apparently I cost my company lots of money

I've been at the company as a software developer for less than 2 months. It's week of demo and this is what the company has been working towards.

Take the stories on here about job searching with a grain of salt

I feel like every other day there's a post where someone's been searching for a job for 6-12 months and unable to find anything. For others looking out there, please think of those scenarios as the exception and NOT the norm. Most of the time those people looking either have terrible resumes or perform extremely poorly in their interviews.

On what fucking plannet

On what fucking planet do employers think a Jr. Position requires 3-7 years of experience?

Is working at AWS really as bad as everyone says it is? Should I take an offer there anyway if only to use it as a stepping stone?

I'm in the final interview stage with Amazon for a SDE1 fresh grad position and (not to sound too overconfident) I have alot of professional experience for a fresh graduate so I'm confident I can pass the interview and hopefully get the offer.

Soul sucking job as new grad

Few months into my new grad SwE job in Defense and I am genuinely depressed. My job is fucking miserable. There is 0 remote opportunity, I work 10 hour days in office in a closed area which means I can’t even have my phone on me, and I’m doing work I am highly unmotivated in.

Anyone here feel the job search in Asian is crazier than in Western world

I've had couple of interviews both in Western and Asian companies. From what I've experienced in Asia the recruitment is hell crazy. Hard core coding like Google, solving lots of quizzes which is irrelevant for the position, require almost full stack skills, overtime is a norm.

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