What is the best alternative to CS50x - HarvardX (edX)?
Here’s the Deal
Slant is powered by a community that helps you make informed decisions. Tell us what you’re passionate about to get your personalized feed and help others.
Pro Community trust
Instead of getting a recommendation from a single dev, you get recommendation from the entire programming community.
Pro Recommendation for every programming language/framework/library
You can find Python as well as Jenkins.
Pro Nice filters
Free, Video, Book, Beginner, Advanced, etc.
Pro Designed for people new to C
The book covers very basics such as C syntax, idioms, compilations, make files, linkers and how to find and prevent bugs.
Pro Very practical and hands on
Contains many exercises that will require getting hands dirty very early on.
Pro Can be combined with a video course
A complimentary course is available on Udemy. The course costs $29.
Con Has errors
Includes technical errors throughout the book.
Pro Challenges your way of thinking
The book really challenges you to think like a programmer by constantly asking questions that force you to solve problems, rather than telling you how to solve the problem and only asking you to write the syntax.
Pro Written in a very clear, understandable way
The author breaks things down into small pieces and uses examples to explain everything in a very clear way.
Con Answers to exercises aren't provided
The exercises throughout the book don't have the exercises provided, which may be a con to beginners.
Pro It's excerpted from the idea of its creators
This book is written by Dennis Ritchie, who was one of the main people behind the development and design of C and UNIX.
Pro Well known classic
This book is so well known that it's affectionately called "K & R", after the authors. It's been cited in many other books and is familiar to most, if not all, CS students.
Pro Creative, challenging exercises
The challenges at the end of each chapter do a great job of requiring many of the skills learned up to that point. Completing the challenges is a great way of insuring you understand the material.
Con Teaches bad style
The K&R style works for old Unix mainframe command-line programs that exit after a simple task and leave the cleanup to the OS; where input is only from trusted experts; and most functions are only called internally to the program. The environment is very different today. This style will get yo...
Con Out of Date
Some commands and practices are out of date, so errata and googling is needed while going through the book.
Con Not for beginners
Assumes familiarity not only with programming concepts but some C language specifics.
Help millions of people make better decisions.
Each month, over 1.7 million people use Slant to find the best products and share their knowledge. Pick the tags you’re passionate about to get a personalized feed and begin contributing your knowledge.