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Micah Lindley
Micah Lindley

Posted on • Edited on • Originally published at blog.micahlindley.com

I took CS50, and you can too

Well, it's coronavirus chaos where I live in Tennessee. Everyone's freaking out about masks and handwashing and yes, the lack of toilet paper. However, I was slightly relieved to be out of school and the pandemic gave me some time to work on my dev skills. I didn't expect to be taking a Harvard course, though!

CS50 is probably the most famous computer science class in the Ivy League school and maybe the world. It's a beginner's introduction to computer science, but at the same times one of the most challenging courses at the school. It begins with Scratch and basic CS fundamentals, but by the end of the 8-week course you're building full-stack webapps with Python, SQL, and HTML/CSS.

I'm currently finishing up the fourth week, which covers the C language. C isn't one of my favorites (in fact, I downright hate it because of its monolithic, ancient approach), but I've learned a lot about low-level computing and just plain logic. It's more comprehensive and structured than any course I've taken on Codecademy (which is still a great option for beginners).

I highly recommend that anyone with the spare time should take CS50. It's definitely changed my views about programming and how computers really work. The class is huge, so huge that it has communities on just about every social media network - Stack Exchange, Reddit, Gitter, anything you can imagine. So what are you waiting for? Go take CS50!

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