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Learner Reviews & Feedback for Python Functions, Files, and Dictionaries by University of Michigan

4.9
stars
5,190 ratings

About the Course

This course introduces the dictionary data structure and user-defined functions. You’ll learn about local and global variables, optional and keyword parameter-passing, named functions and lambda expressions. You’ll also learn about Python’s sorted function and how to control the order in which it sorts by passing in another function as an input. For your final project, you’ll read in simulated social media data from a file, compute sentiment scores, and write out .csv files. It covers chapters 10-16 of the textbook “Fundamentals of Python Programming,” which is the accompanying text (optional and free) for this course. The course is well-suited for you if you have already taken the "Python Basics" course and want to gain further fundamental knowledge of the Python language. Together, both courses are geared towards newcomers to Python programming, those who need a refresher on Python basics, or those who may have had some exposure to Python programming but want a more in-depth exposition and vocabulary for describing and reasoning about programs. This is a follow-up to the "Python Basics" course (course 1 of the Python 3 Programming Specialization), and it is the second of five courses in the specialization....

Top reviews

SD

Jun 24, 2020

Good course, had a great hands on practice with the Runestone Notebook Environment.

Appreciate the efforts of the instructors and whoever has designed in making the course and helped delivering it.

SG

Sep 15, 2019

It's amazing learn for beginner .A wonderful learning resource and very simple way explains everything . Excellent lessons ,check your understanding ,e-book ,practice, and quiz work and lot of thing

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26 - 50 of 852 Reviews for Python Functions, Files, and Dictionaries

By James U

Jul 16, 2019

Excellent lessons, check your understanding, e-book, practice, and quiz work. This is not easy. You must know how to implement the instructions and be a bit clever as well. It is not perfect, but close enough.

Only issues are more suggestions. 1. To have a Show Me and then get a new questions, when you are stuck. The user blogs are only of minimal help. 2. To be precise in expectations - QA the requests for comprehension by students. I found expert reviews to be of marginal help as they all have assumptions.

By Collin M

Jan 4, 2021

The lectures did a good job of conveying the information contained in the interactive textbook beforehand and provided the learner with foundational information from which to apply and practice in the concept checks, assessments, and exercises. My only suggestion would be to include a section on writing and formatting csv files as this skill was necessary for the course project. Aside from that, I would highly recommend this course to anyone interested in beginning to learn how to code with Python.

By Brian L

Jan 19, 2021

Thorough, the video follows the reading almost exactly (reinforcement), and Runestone allows for tons of practice and repetition. I'm getting started on the next course in the series right away. I took this course as a free yearly course offered to students, and then took advantage of Coursera's 25% off discount for a Coursera Plus account, which this and many other courses are included in. Looking forward to more great content from UM (GO BLUE!) and Coursera! Thank you to all involved.

By Habtamu S

Aug 11, 2020

This course, which is a part of the specialization course, is one of the skillfully crafted courses. It equips learners with the very important conepts of python programming in a step wise approach. Also, it allows you to practise it through intesively in such a way that helps learners solidify their knowledge and practise. It is definately one of the best courses I have ever taken and would reccomend it to anyone who is committed to learn the course.

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By SAPTARSHI D

Jun 25, 2020

Good course, had a great hands on practice with the Runestone Notebook Environment.

Appreciate the efforts of the instructors and whoever has designed in making the course and helped delivering it.

By Majid B

Nov 27, 2021

This course is artistically well designed. I am able to complete this 35 days'(five weeks) course in just 23 days due to its well suited teaching mechanism.

By Napoleon B

Apr 7, 2019

"If you want to learn the basics of Python3 programming as a newb, this is the perfect course!"

By Ravi S V

Feb 16, 2019

Nice course. Don't know why it isn't more popular.

By Josh J

Aug 28, 2019

The course went well until the final. There was content that was not taught in the class, but you were expected to know how to do it. I think the curriculum was fine and was content was interesting to go through.

By Ismailov V

May 9, 2022

This course is very difficult for beginners and very crumpled.

By S.Moneebah N

Apr 6, 2023

One of the best python programming courses ever, in fact, this course was my favorite from every course I've ever tried on coursera or any other learning platform. The exercises were easy to follow and the buildup of difficult concepts was perfectly executed, The assignment were amazing in the sense that I was challenged but not to the point where I dont understand what's going on and I give up because its too difficult or hard to follow. Thank you so much to the amazing instructors who are so incredibly kind and caring (also hilarious), you truly brought back my passion of programming. Thank you from the bottom of my heart. I am forever grateful.

By Susana P

May 20, 2023

Great follow-up course to the Python Basics in the specialization. This is a really gentle introduction into programming, the explanations are clear and the exercises are challenging but manageable. CodeLens in the interactive book is great to understand what is happening in the program and to debug. The practice questions when opening a new session of  the Runestone Interactive environment are a great way to refresh concepts learned. Overall a solid course, I'm loving Python and I look forward to completing the specialization.

By Alex C

Nov 14, 2021

I've dabbled with Python three for about four years now, trying much to learn it on my own. I was always getting tripped up over defining functions and working with dictionaries. But University of Michigan's MOOC, "Pyhton Functions, Files, and Dictionaries," made those concepts so much easier to grasp. It helps that the videos are short and succinct, and the daily review questions through the Runestone text fosters retention of the material. I highly recommend this course.

By Igor F

Jan 27, 2019

This course helps to understand how to use context manager to prevent you from forget to close files that are opened for write, nicely explains how you can iterate through files directly. It helps to understand why using a local variable inside a function is a good idea. Finally it helps to understand how to treat dictionaries and tuples. Overall, that's creates a great foundation for the subsequent course in the specialization. Very enjoyed.

By Carl T T

Jun 24, 2022

I thought that the course was excellent. Quite challenging and fairly fast-paced. The teaching materials were excellent as was the presentation. Everything is taught from various angles - videos, reading, exercises, practice drills and more so the material is really well revised as new material is being taught. Great presenters each with their own individual style. I would highly recommend this course to anyone interested in Python.

By Shubham T

Apr 23, 2020

This was a super-fun course! The materials were very easy to follow, and delivered in a very friendly and engaging manner. I highly recommend this course to anyone just getting started in programming.I feel incredible that I knew almost nothing about programming just a month ago. Now I have done two of the courses of the specialization and I can actually understand other basic codes. Great course!

By Gastons T

Mar 29, 2022

Review of the course:

1. Best course so far I've ever taken. I actually feel like I have learned something. 2. Several assignments are done for Python 2 and that throw me off cause it required extra steps for it to work on Python 3. 3. Python engine version for assignmets itself is outdated, would be nice to update. For example rsplit function isn't working etc.

Overall very good course, thank you!

By Scott K

Dec 13, 2020

Very informative. Great textbook and exercises. The lectures were a bit basic for me, but that's just because they were thorough. I was able to skip them and just use the online textbook and complete assignments to go faster when I wanted. Do yourself a favor and download PyCharm or another code editing program to make it easier to experiment on your own as you work through the assignments.

By FAYEZ Q

Jan 19, 2021

I absolutely enjoyed this course. Not only did it help me gain an insight on Python files, dictionaries and functions, but it also helped me use these concepts smartly to create a project. A very well paced and well structured course. I would definitely recommend it to anyone interested in Python, and especially to those who have completed the first course of this Python specialization.

By Debasish P

Aug 30, 2019

This course will enable you to move from basic to a bit into intermediate level and believe me the material and the way of explanation is so simple that even a person with zero knowledge will be able to learn easily.

One small thing wanted to highlight that while doing this course please give all your concentartion into this.

Hope they keep on upgrading the course over the time period.

By Muhammed J Z

Sep 19, 2020

This course really challenges your basics of handling files,lists,strings, dictionaries and functions in Python. The exercises and practice problems were very helpful and I learned a lot about using these python features in a practical context. The final assignment was also a very fun project. Overall, this course will definitely help those trying to hone their basics in Python.

By Tingting Y

Aug 9, 2020

Overall it's a great course. The textbook has been very helpful; I find some of the exercises too easy though. I didn't watch most of the videos because I could understand the content very well just by reading the textbook. The final project offered an opportunity to solve a very close to life problem. I look forward to seeing more exercises like this in the following courses.

By Steven P

May 8, 2021

Hands down the courses in the specialty are the best online learning experience I've had. Lectures were short and clear. Practice was well designed to achieve full comprehension. Interactive textbook that incorporates practice without leaving the text allowed reading and practice to happen nearly simultaneously.

Excellent balance between theory and practice.

By Zainab S

Sep 6, 2020

This course is just great I have learned many skills in this course and the way the professors teaches everything in detail and with patience without rushing is to be applauded but the thing I like the very most is the codelens it provides you real demonstration of what's actually going inside the program I really appreciate their efforts, Thank you so much

By Tatiana A

Sep 27, 2019

This course is grear, as well as previous one in this specialization.

I finally got how to use Lambda and Sorted functions. Love the interactive materials and all the practice questions. As always the more practice the merrier. On another note, this course need to be readproofed again - I saw many little mistakes here and there in the interactive book.