Basically I did cs50 just out of general interest in programming and it became my hobby. Started doing an internship with a company in a non-technical office role. Had a lot of repetitive tasks and I decided to use my CS50 skills to automate my work. I actively didn't want to work in software and keep it as a hobby, but now I'm project lead on a massive project to reform some internal systems to make them more efficient. CS50 helped me discover what imposter syndrome feels like 🤣

This man's style of teaching is too good, genuinely the best quality teaching I have experienced throughout 8 years of primary school, 4 years of high school, and now 2 years of university. I used to take the quality of teaching I received from my teachers for what it was. Never really thought too much about it; always blaming poor grades I received entirely on myself.

Well here I am, 2nd year of university studying computer science and wow. It is almost soul-crushing that I am paying my institution the money I am to receive teaching that comes without passion, without clarity or care, and is simply presented without quality. Meanwhile, I'm picking up on things almost instantaneously through this man (Mr. Malan) who I am not paying a dime, learning twice as efficiently due to the teaching being thrice as quality.

Most of all, I feel for the students in my year who have not been introduced to his level of teaching and are trying to get by with what they receive from the university. The university I attend claims to be a world top 100 university. It's obvious the people who establish these ranks have never been taught by any of the 16 teachers I have had up to this point (not counting tutors).

Anyways, a little vent but mostly a big thank you to David Malan. Without you, I would have no idea what a good teacher really is, and would be learning the various programming languages you teach at a far slower pace with half the success.

Thank you and sorry for the click-bait.

I recently completed CS50x – Harvard’s Introduction to Computer Science(wait for the final project). I shared a bit about my progress and experience, and to my surprise, Professor David Malan personally replied to me! This truly made my journey even more memorable, and I’m very grateful for his guidance and for the CS50 team’s incredible work. CS50 was challenging but extremely rewarding, and receiving this acknowledgment from Professor Malan is a huge honor.

This is a follow-up of sorts from a previous post. I saw a post plugging CS50 on /r/YouShouldKnow and got a little teary-eyed reminiscing.

CS50 literally changed my life 6 years ago. I was maybe a year into writing software for fun, mostly in PHP and Javascript, scheming ways to turn it into a career. I had a BA from a good university that I wasn't using, was running a dead-end business that had stopped growing, and felt kinda bleak about my overall outlook. I got all my juice from staying up till 2AM writing code. That feeling of seeing a computer do what I told it to absolutly set my brain on fire.

I had so many questions about what was going on under the hood. How did it all work? What did these explanations on stackoverflow mean (the ones surrounding the code snippets I copy-pasta'd). A friend who was a professional software engineer suggested looking for a MOOC from a major university.

I found CS50 and worked through it over about 6 months. I know you all know this, but David is an amazing educator. His "cliffhangers" at the end of lectures and intentionality around exploring "naive solutions" to demonstrate dead ends are brilliant lecture techniques. I felt the content was so meaty and challenging, problem sets 2 weeks ahead seem unsolvable but then by the time you get there bam something clicks and you get it and solve it. I couldn't wait to watch the next lecture, sometimes even watched them again and again just for the satisfying moments. Really just an amazing educational experience.

A few months after CS50, I snuck through the backdoor into my first software engineering job. Basically got a software-adjacent job, started writing code at work, and no one stopped me. 6 months after that, asked for a title change to reflect the work I was doing. Got into Java, started interviewing, got another job, and suddenly no one knew I wasn't really a software engineer.

Fast forward five years, and I was leading a team of 7 building a product with an iOS, Android, and web component, used by hundreds of thousands of people. I was mentoring engineers, tackling big refactors, performance tuning, and charting the architectural course (forgive the mixed metaphor) for 1/4 of the engineering products a large, profitable company.

And then... The director of product at my company and I started talking about what we'd do if we built something together. We kept talking, hatched a plan, started bootstrapping it, put in our notice, flew to SF, raised a year of runway, and... quit our jobs.

Today is my first day full-time as CTO of a company I created. I'm not joking. Literally today.

If you're thinking about taking this course, do it. I personally recommend spending a few months writing software before you begin (as I did) to get the most out of the experience, but it might be a life-changing experience for you. Yeah sample size of 1, I know. Not everyone is gonna have my story.

Thank you /u/davidjmalan. I got teary-eyed with gratitude writing this. Thanks for the love and care you put into that course. And thanks to the r/cs50 team. Seriously, you all have changed my life. Thank you.

Edit: Thanks for the gold, kind stranger!

Hyped af, school offered a field trip and ofc I had to accept. Feels surreal, being we’re all the videos take place!!!

I’m currently on the week 1 video on conditionals and he uses the Harry Potter houses as a way to demonstrate if, elif, and else.

I tried to shorten line 3 to: If name == “Harry” == “Hermione” == “Ron”:

And every time I typed in one of those 3 names, it answered “Who?”

I don’t understand why this wouldn’t have worked and been more concise than writing out name == over and over again.

I am a COMPLETE beginner to coding all together so maybe this is a silly question :p