Computing in Python IV: Objects & Algorithms

Georgia Institute of Technology via edX

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Provider

edX
Pricing

Free Online Course (Audit)
Languages

English
Certificate

$189.00 Certificate Available
Duration & workload

5 weeks, 9-10 hours a week
Sessions

On-Demand
Level

Beginner
Subtitles

English

Found in

Part of

Introduction to Python Programming

5.0

Overview

Complete your introductory knowledge of computer science with this final course on objects and algorithms. Now that you've learned about complex control structures and data structures, learn to develop programs that more intuitively leverage your natural understanding of problems through object-oriented programming. Then, learn to analyze the complexity and efficiency of these programs through algorithms. In addition, certify your broader knowledge of Introduction to Computing with a comprehensive exam.

By the end of this course, you'll be able to write programs in Python that leverage your more natural understanding of data structures by creating objects to represent the structures you work with most often. For example, if you were creating a class roster application, you'll learn how to create an object representing a student's name, ID number, and attendance record. Then, you'll be able to create applications that leverage sorting and searching algorithms to sort that roster alphabetically, search for a particular student, and evaluate the efficiency of both those operations.

Structurally, the course is comprised of several parts. Instruction is delivered via a series of short (2-3 minute) videos. In between those videos, you'll complete both multiple choice questions and coding problems to demonstrate your knowledge of the material that was just covered. These exercises count for 20% of your grade. Then, after each major chapter, you'll complete a problem set of collected, more challenging problems. These count for 40% of your grade. Finally, you'll complete a final course exam, which counts for the remaining 40% of your grade.

Syllabus

Chapter 1. Objects. Working with instances of complex data types or defining your own, like creating a class to represent a video game character, a class syllabus, or an item for sale.

Chapter 2. Algorithms. Creating complex code for searching in large lists or sorting lists of data, and analyzing code for its complexity.

Chapter 3. Course Recap. A comprehensive review of the Xseries as a whole, leading into the final exam.

Taught by

David Joyner

Reviews

4.9 rating, based on 111 Class Central reviews

4.6 rating at edX based on 32 ratings

Start your review of Computing in Python IV: Objects & Algorithms

Troy Dunton @troydunton

Definitely the best course I've taken on Python programming so far. It's costly compared to some other online course, but I think it provides an experience much closer to taking a university course, so it's cheap in comparison to that.

The real value is the sheer volume of interesting programming problems you get to tackle. Also, they have a really good auto-grader, so you're able to write everything from scratch each time, which really builds your programming knowledge. I've done other courses where you're just updating sections of the code at a time, and the result is that, when it comes time to tackle more challenging programs, you just aren't ready.
Wim Leys @KeroMar

I have programmed - without taking any course - in Python 2.x more than 10 years ago (and I forgot most of it). I am interested in data science and was looking for a Python course as a first step up. I was also looking at an introductory programming…

I have programmed - without taking any course - in Python 2.x more than 10 years ago (and I forgot most of it). I am interested in data science and was looking for a Python course as a first step up. I was also looking at an introductory programming course suitable for my kids; Python is perfect for that.

I have followed all 4 "Computing in Python"- courses, and I feel ready now to take on more advanced Python courses or books.

Each course is divided in 4 chapters, each chapter ends with an "exam", the course ends with a final exam. Each course took about a week to complete (+- 3 hours/evening and 2 full days in the weekend (+- 8 hours per day). (I had to hurry, the courses were about to get archived.). The programming exercises and debugging take most of the time and are at the same time the most valuable to grok everything.
There is a SmartBook that is provided as a PDF. Next time I would read the PDF instead of viewing the video's, that would have been faster.

The teaching is well structured and the programming problems are fun to make: they are quite basic at the beginning and get more challenging afterwards. You will make so many exercises that programming in Python really becomes an automation and the exercises never become boring.

I have advised my kids (they are almost or around 20 year) to take the courses.
I recommend the courses.
Anonymous

I took this class as a pre-req course for my online masters. The material is comprehensive yet approachable. What I like most about the course is that you learn the theory behind computing but you immediately put that theory to use in interactive c…

I took this class as a pre-req course for my online masters. The material is comprehensive yet approachable.

What I like most about the course is that you learn the theory behind computing but you immediately put that theory to use in interactive coding exercises that truly test your knowledge on a particular topic.

While this course is challenging, I found it approachable and never felt overwhelmed. I used tools like ChatGPT to help me debug and I found it to go a lot faster. Overall, I would say rather than the difficulty, the volume and time of the class is what got me. The problem set took me close to 4 hours at times. But I found it worth it as I truly understand how to code in Python.

I feel confident and ready for my masters. I definitely recommend taking this course!
Anonymous

This was an excellent course that has left me with a confident understanding of the basics of Python, as well as a solid introductory knowledge of computing as a subject. I really enjoyed learning from the professor because he explained each concept…

This was an excellent course that has left me with a confident understanding of the basics of Python, as well as a solid introductory knowledge of computing as a subject. I really enjoyed learning from the professor because he explained each concept in a clear, informative way. The interactive coding assignments helped me practice the content I was learning, and was well tailored to test and build on the skills I learned through the video lectures.

I appreciate how the course avoids focusing in on just Python alone, and instead broadens the lessons to apply to computing as a whole. That means that if you are learning Python as a gateway language to other more complex languages, this course is a good place to start because it teaches computing concepts more thoroughly than just how they apply in Python.

I also really appreciate how easy it is to give feedback. The high production value and general refinement seem to come as a result of attention to student reception and experiences.

I think this course would be pretty accessible to someone with little-to-no prior experience in programming, but it also is not too boring in the early chapters for those who do know a thing or two about coding. This course is definitely worth a try.
Jimmy Miao Zhang

This course is so great.

Before taking this course, I had been learning programming part-time via self-taught and bootcamps for a while, and I had started to take many fundamental concepts for granted without asking why they were designed or defined in certain ways. Enrolling in this course has been a revelation. It has filled the gaps in my programming foundation that I wasn't even fully aware of.

So, once again, thank very much for offering this course!
Anonymous

Great learning opportunity!! Had an enjoyable time analyzing data sets including Taylor Swift songs, Pokemon, GT Football scores, names in the US Social Security Administration, and train station metrics in the Atlanta MARTA rail database. A great course for those interested in improving their problem solving capabilities using data structures in python. Definitely will continue with GT MOOC offerings.

- Ty Hemphill
Roger Giovannangeli

This course (and the preceding three courses in the overall program) took me from a level of having just watched a few videos on programming to being very comfortable looking at code (at least in python) and thinking through how it would behave.
Anonymous

I finished this course, and the CS1301 Xseries as a whole. It gives a great overview of all concepts of programming, after the course, you are capable of going further in any area of programming. The language python is great for beginners, it is q…

I finished this course, and the CS1301 Xseries as a whole. It gives a great overview of all concepts of programming, after the course, you are capable of going further in any area of programming.
The language python is great for beginners, it is quite intuitive, and can help you get into programming, and maybe move to another (maybe more complex) language if you need to in the future.

On the material itself, there are videos with exercises accompanying them. The videos are very clear, the instructor takes the time to explain everything without skipping over any parts. If you already know some of it, you can get right to the exercises to check your knowledge. If you are new to a concept however, the exercises are a great way to check you understand it. In addition to problems directly related to knowledge and concepts, there are programming exercises with realistic problems, like coding a program which tells you where you can get food with the money you have or one which looks in a database to find what football team has scored the greatest amount of points during the season. Coding exercises are also a great plus to get into programming and start coding as soon as you learnt the concepts.

All in all, a course I would gladly recommend for someone wanting to get into programming, it'll give you all the knowledge you need to start making your own programming projects or get into higher levels of programming with other courses
Anonymous

This course and professional certificate as a whole has been excellent. David Joyner, the instructor, is really good at explaining concepts that can be very confusing in a simple and understandable way. I think the series was really solid as a whole…

This course and professional certificate as a whole has been excellent. David Joyner, the instructor, is really good at explaining concepts that can be very confusing in a simple and understandable way. I think the series was really solid as a whole, but I do feel like the last chapter (Objects & Algorithms) was rushed a little bit. It feels like whoever made this series started to get tired and lose focus towards the end. I also noticed that the deeper you dive into the series, the more and more weird grammar mistakes and auto-grader errors you will find in the problem sets, which is all further evidence of how rushed the course became towards the end. But if you put all these minor disruptions aside, this course is extremely underrated and underrecognized. It is truly one of the best introductions you can get to programming. It gets the difficulty spot on, it is easy-normal for the most part, but can get very challenging towards the end. And you get an incredible amount of practice problems to make sure that the things you learned are sticking in your head. It also does a very good job at exposing you to several areas of computing and programming so that you can have an idea of where to go once you are finished. The only major thing that I feel like was missing was a big capstone project at the end. But considering how beginner-level and basic the courses are, I don't think that would be a very big deal. Overall, I would give it five stars.
Anonymous

This class was an excellent refresher for me as I've been out of college for a few years and had not directly utilized object oriented programming and algorithms in Python.
Anonymous

One of the best and most thorough courses out there
Step by step you will learn simple, and more and more complex concepts
Anonymous

I finished the intro to python programming professional certificate and thought it was a great program. In particular, it seems great for those to new to python as it really builds a solid foundation. I don't have a cs background and learned python outside of academia. I liked that the course felt like it contained more CS principles. Even though I came in with a decent amount of experience, I found that I learned quite a bit. I think it's great to have frequent coding exercises (e.g., it seems like most videos/tabs in the class have one). The sandbox is nice, too, though it's easy enough to mess around on Google Colab or a Jupyter notebook.
Anonymous

I have completed this and the four previous Computing in Python courses. Usually do each one in a day or two. I have found the content to be very well explained and I have learned quite a bit during the "free" outline. However, I have seen many e…

I have completed this and the four previous Computing in Python courses. Usually do each one in a day or two. I have found the content to be very well explained and I have learned quite a bit during the "free" outline. However, I have seen many errors, from grammar and "extra" words that should've been edited out. I have also found errors in the autograder, for example:

Coding problem 4

We tested your code with players = ('HORSE', 'HOR', 'HORS', 'HORSE').
We expected check_horse_winner to return the str "Players 1, 2: keep playing!".
However, it returned the str "Players 2, 3: keep playing!".

Clearly, players two and three were still going, as my code returned, but the autograder still showed 1 & 2.

With that said, overall, I am extremely happy with the course and the knowledge that I have taken away from it. If I had paid for this, I would've been quite disappointed to have found all these errors.

Again, content and training I would give a 5, but the overall web-grading and presentation is much lower due to all the mistakes that I have seen. (and i'm not very good at programming yet).

Thank you! I do enjoy these very much!
Anonymous

Excellent material. I'm taking this because I'm looking at the OMSCS program but have never done any Python programming before (My education and career were based in Java). So coming into the class with significant prior experience I was anticipatin…

Excellent material. I'm taking this because I'm looking at the OMSCS program but have never done any Python programming before (My education and career were based in Java). So coming into the class with significant prior experience I was anticipating this program would be very introductory.

Now, mind you, it was - but I was very impressed at the class's ability to target both brand new students to computer science as well as people already familiar with programming but just completely new to Python. I really appreciated the amount of time spent reviewing and testing on the language's quirks and comparing it to other languages. I appreciated the reference to the 'Pythonic' way of doing things and going into things like how Python handles variable mutability and memory management. Overall, I was just very impressed with the program's ability to appeal to a very broad range of students. It's not an inexpensive program - but it's likely to be the one I recommend whenever someone tells me they want to 'get into programming'.
Anonymous

I took this course as a prerequirement for the OMSCS program. I expected to breeze through it, but there were some difficult problems that I really enjoyed taking the time to work through. Dr. Joyner does a great job explaining why he teaches certai…

I took this course as a prerequirement for the OMSCS program. I expected to breeze through it, but there were some difficult problems that I really enjoyed taking the time to work through. Dr. Joyner does a great job explaining why he teaches certain ideas in a certain way that prepares you sequentially through out the program.

I entered the course wanting to learn more about Python, but I left wanted to learn more about computing.

I'm very pleasantly surprised by the quality of the program and by no means think the price point isn't worth the amount. I took my time to set up a schedule to learn the material on a weekly basis and I'm glad I did instead of trying to fly by the material in a short amount of time.

Even if you are not applying for the OMSCS program, and even if you have learn Python before, I highly recommend this course to learn more about computing and how computer behave.
Anonymous

This course provided an excellent overview of programming fundamentals and the Python Programming Language. I especially enjoyed the unit covering Sorting and Search Algorithms as it gave great context not only into how processes are done, but why they are done the way they are and how to make them more efficient! While I came in with some prior knowledge of the Python Programming Language, I feel this course has definitely deepened my general understanding of Computer Science.
Yilin Lu

I completed all 4 courses in the series. As someone new to programming, I really appreciate the professor's incremental approach. The short deep dive videos followed immediately with coding exercises made it possible for me to absorb & understand t…

I completed all 4 courses in the series.

As someone new to programming, I really appreciate the professor's incremental approach. The short deep dive videos followed immediately with coding exercises made it possible for me to absorb & understand the information fully. The conceptual videos are also really well done - Professor Joyner would often illustrate the concepts by incrementally running through the code in the video while highlighting the new concepts graphically in play. Basically, you get taught how to read code before expecting to write code and solve problems.

The coding exercises are really well thought out and progressively build on-top of each other as the lessons proceed. I believe each course in the series had over 200 exercises, which meant I completed nearly 800 Python code challenges at completion.
Anonymous

I have taken this course, as well as the previous 3 courses to complete the GTx CS1301xIV Computing in Python. This is the first course I have taken online, enjoyed and completed. The course itself is well structured, with a book in pdf format, goo…

I have taken this course, as well as the previous 3 courses to complete the GTx CS1301xIV Computing in Python.

This is the first course I have taken online, enjoyed and completed. The course itself is well structured, with a book in pdf format, good, short videos and explanations and hundreds of code snippets to practice on in the sandbox. There is also the online intelligent book with questions to work through.

Although I have a programming background, I haven't programmed for decades and python was new to me. I feel I have learnt the basic structure, and more importantly, learnt how to continue learning and how to pull in further libraries and use them in my future code.

Suggestions for further improvement... Module IV ( compared to I,II and III) feels somewhat incomplete. There are some typos in programs which i assume will be cleaned up in the future.

Definitely recommend for someone to embark on a python voyage!
Anonymous

I started this program(4 courses) with absolutely zero knowledge of programming or coding. Now, after completing this program, I am very confident of my basic understanding of Python and programming as a whole. I give my credit to the intelligent de…

I started this program(4 courses) with absolutely zero knowledge of programming or coding. Now, after completing this program, I am very confident of my basic understanding of Python and programming as a whole. I give my credit to the intelligent design of this program. It does not rush and the instructor keeps repeating important or tricky ideas in multiple videos over the course. It not only teaches you syntax, but also develops your basic understanding of how code executes with multiple exercises. After every video, there is an excercise. Either mcq or a coding problem. Then after each unit there is a problem set of around 20 coding problems. 24 practice coding problems, 2 practice tests, lastly, a timed test. There is also a smartbook which contains even more exercises!

In short, this program makes sure that you learn with practice and repetition. I highly recommend this.
Andrew J. Ordway

I am just completing CS1301xIV: Computing in Python, and by extension the whole series for the CS1301 Professional Certificate. It was a delight! This series on computing begins at an introductory level that any motivated student can follow and it…

I am just completing CS1301xIV: Computing in Python, and by extension the whole series for the CS1301 Professional Certificate. It was a delight! This series on computing begins at an introductory level that any motivated student can follow and it gradually builds up the students' skills to handle progressively more challenging problems.

In completing this series, you can expect to develop a solid programming basis in Python that can be immediately used to solve practical problems in your own field of work, given you work with information. The course can also serve to whet your appetite for further study in computer science or adjacent fields. If you have never programmed, are a new programmer, or you want to review Python, I would recommend this course for you.