Udemy Class Review: Python For Beginners Complete Python Programming
Learning to program software can be an exceedingly difficult task, but one that has great rewards if you are successful. If you’ve never heard of Python before, it’s a versatile programming language that is known for being relatively easy to learn. Numerous websites and tools are available online that aim to make learning Python programming easier, but Udemy’s Python for Beginners: Complete Python Programming course doesn’t live up to its promise.
Course Overview
After giving you a brief overview of the course aims, the lecturer instructs you to download and install Anaconda, which is an open-source Python coding software. Right off the bat, this becomes problematic. The URL provided to access the software is listed as http://continuum.io/downloads, which returned an Error 522 every time I tried it. It’s unclear if this is because the website is down or if it simply can’t be accessed from within the United States.
This problem is made all the more bewildering by the lecturer, who immediately after shows how to download the software in the video. The lecturer doesn’t use the URL provided, however, and instead finds the correct software by searching google for Anaconda Python. This is also the method you will need to use in order to access the software. Although these confusing instructions on how to obtain the programming software appears to be a relatively minor issue, it gets things off to a rather rough start.
If you thought the lecture series would improve from here, you are mistaken. The lectures are put together from separate video segments that have been poorly edited together. At times the video cut the lecturer off while he is talking and jump to a different video segment. This happens in the second lecture and jumps into a discussion on a software utility referred to as Spyder. At no point does the lecturer explain how to open the Spyder utility, or how to get the software open to the point that he is currently working at.
The rest of the lecture series essentially does just this and jumps frequently from one point to another without explaining how the lecturer got to that point. He also doesn’t explain how you can use the software much once you are there.
Conclusion
Let me just come out and say that this is the worst course I’ve taken from Udemy to date and that I strongly recommend against anyone else taking it. Sure the course taught me some programming terms, and it also taught me how to do basic math problems in Anaconda Python, but that’s it. For a course that aims to teach you Python, it really doesn’t do much besides show you the absolute bare basics. You would need another course in order to learn how to start really building a program in Anaconda Python, which means that this course falls short of its goal of teaching you how to write simple code in Python. It leaves you little better off than if you hadn’t taken the course at all.
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