When comparing CS50x - HarvardX (edX) vs Learn C The Hard Way, the Slant community recommends Learn C The Hard Way for most people. In the question“What are the best resources for a beginner to learn C?” Learn C The Hard Way is ranked 1st while CS50x - HarvardX (edX) is ranked 4th. The most important reason people chose Learn C The Hard Way is:
The book covers very basics such as C syntax, idioms, compilations, make files, linkers and how to find and prevent bugs.
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Pros
Pro Amazing instructors
The instructors are very enthusiastic and extremely knowledgeable.
The main professor uses a variety of fun examples to demonstrate points, often making for exciting and funny lectures.
Pro High quality instruction
CS50x is the actual Harvard course turned into a MOOC, with the lectures filmed from the actual Harvard course. The problem sets are all the same as well.
This has resulted in the quality of the course being extremely high.
Pro Really in-depth
The reason the time demand for the course is so great is because of how in-depth it is.
CS50 has you programming in C right from the start. Computer Science concepts, such as runtime analysis and data structures, are also taught very early on and applied in projects.
Along with C, this course will also introduce you to web development (JavaScript and PHP).
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.
Pro Free
The book is available online for free.
Cons
Con Large demand on time
The course is very fast-paced. Weekly suggested readings are usually a couple of chapters from two different text books, there are hours of videos each week, plus problem sets that often take a beginner many hours to complete.
In order to keep up with the course, you have to be prepared to put in a lot of hours.
Con Has errors
Includes technical errors throughout the book.