CS50: A Passport to College Level Computer Science

At the end of 7th grade, my parents told me to try something new since I now know the basics of programming. They found an introductory computer science course for me through edX called CS50. Honestly, I was more apprehensive than enthusiastic about this course. I was worried that it would be too advanced and I would not be able to get a good score in some of the assignments. However, I decided to take it because I knew that until I take higher-level courses, I am not going to find out whether this is a good career path for me. The course was divided into 11 weeks. Each week had two one-hour long lectures, supplemental videos for each concept, and a problem set with programming exercises requiring you to apply and tie in all of the concepts. I watched the lectures with my parents, who are both computer programmers, and the supplemental videos on my own. For the problem sets, I first tried the exercises on my own and then took my parents’ suggestions if I needed them. The course started with Scratch, went on to teaching programming concepts with C, and ended with applying various programming languages and other concepts in computer science to produce more complex programs such as an application like Google maps. Apart from doing Scratch again, I also enjoyed producing complex applications. However, my favorite part was when they introduced different computer science-related careers such as robotics and game theory. CS50 gave me a taste of what studying computer science for a major was really like. Although it was not as much fun as JavaScript (which I had absolutely loved), it was definitely worth all of my hard work. I even wrote this as my best accomplishment when my sophomore English teacher gave us an introduce yourself worksheet.