CS50 - Intro to Computer Science - Week 0

cs50 - week 0 - scratch

"It's not the easiest way to learn it, but it is the best way"

On edx, you can follow this course for free. It has the recorded Harvard lectures and the same problems as the students of the Harvard University students.

lecture 0
A lot of the first lecture puts the emphasis on the fact that you don't need any programming experience. Apperently, even the lector , David Malan, didn't go to the University with the plan to study computer science. There's also some statistics about how the majority of students had no prior contact with programming and you should (logically) not compare yourself with others, but with where you started. Which is pretty good advice for everything you want to learn.

To start the course somewhat lighthearted, no coding takes place in the first lecture. Just a small bit on binary, a bit about how literal computers interpret commands and finnaly an introduction to Scratch. Scratch is a visual "coding" program designed by MIT meant for children but can be used as a way to introduce some concepts like loops and conditionals.


problem set 0

The first problem set is rather easy, just make anything you want in Scratch with a few requirements:

Your project must have at least two sprites, at least one of which must resemble something other than a cat.
Your project must have at least three scripts total (i.e., not necessarily three per sprite).
Your project must use at least one condition, one loop, and one variable.
Your project must use at least one sound.
Your project should be more complex than most of those demonstrated in lecture (many of which, though instructive, were quite short) but it can be less complex than Oscartime. As such, your project should probably use a few dozen puzzle pieces overall.

I made a poor imitation of flappy bird in about 2 hours.



(So... restarting this doesn't seem to work when not on the scratch site, so you should refresh the page for that. Also be wary of errors...)