I have just finished the course called an introduction to interactive programming in Python, at coursera.org, and …. it has been .. brilliant!
I have spent 10 weeks for this course (including one holiday week!), and it’s highly recommended for those who want to start programming in Python, although you are not thinking in game programming.
Ideal for beginners
The first 7weeks are, in my opinion, the most interesting weeks. The beginning of the course is the esential fro those who knows nothing about programming, that’s is, variables, printing, … The learning curve is really good, and you can notice how difficulty is incrising as the weeks are passing by. The last two weeks of the course are focused of the final game, explaing all you need to know in order to solve the final game.
I liked the videos, and explanations are clear. Every video takes about 5 to 15 minutes.
I liked the fact of solving a game problem every week, more easy at the beginning, and more complicated at the end, until you have to program SpaceRocks, the classic game! At the begnning, when the course starts and they show you what you’ll program, and you can think … I don’t think I’ll do it, but the content of the course is so well structured in order to give you all you need, and of course, to program the final game. Other games you’ll program are Blackjack, Pong, or Memory.
A very useful aspect of the course are templates, because every project have a template that guide you to finish the assignment!
The course is using codeskulptor, a website that allows you to program in Python, and it’s the graphical platform used on the course. It’s based on simplegui. I have end up surprised on how easy is to program with this module, although I couldn’t have it installed on my local machine.
My opinion
If you are thinking in starting to program, definetly, that’s your course! The fact that the exercises are games is visually very good, and the better is that they make easy to program games!
Personally, the course has served me to improve my knowledge and skills about Python, although it has been difficult to me the last two weeks because I am more interested in databases than games.
So, that’s my opinon, and I hope you like in order to enroll to the next edition!