When comparing CS50x - HarvardX (edX) vs C Programming Absolute Beginner's Guide, the Slant community recommends CS50x - HarvardX (edX) for most people. In the question“What are the best resources for a beginner to learn C?” CS50x - HarvardX (edX) is ranked 4th while C Programming Absolute Beginner's Guide is ranked 7th. The most important reason people chose CS50x - HarvardX (edX) is:
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.
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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 Short chapters
There are 32 chapters in the book, which is 352 pages long.
The short chapters make it extremely easy to use this book as a reference, and breaks everything down into small pieces that are easy to digest.
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 Slow for someone with prior experience
This book, as the title suggests, is really aimed at people with no prior programming experience.
Fundamentals are gone through in detail (such as loops, variables etc.), which would be quite a slow review for someone with experience in another language.