Assignments are too long and requires a level of programming ability NOT humanly possible for a beginner programmer to attain within a single semester.

Great unit to develop a solid foundational knowledge of programming.

ok this unit is notoriously hard for complete beginners who it claims to cater for. knowing this and having absolutely no background in coding, i prepared for it well before the semester started and it really paid off. i took the Harvard CS50 course which is in C so not very relevant to this unit but it covers the fundamental concepts very well, and then I did the beginner python course on Codecademy, which took me 1.5 months to finish. after this, the first 5 weeks of the unit was a breeze for me so it goes to prove that even if you know nothing about coding, you can still do well in this unit with good prep. i would have struggled a lot more if i hadn't prepared for it but if it's too late for you, try to get as much practice as possible with the lab and practice questions on ed. it will take a while to figure out but once you've figured it out for yourself, you'll understand it a lot better. they had a major change in assessment when i did this course, most likely to lower the fail rates so if you've put in the work, you won't fail. the assignment is challenging, start as early as you can. set your own deadlines for when you want to finish the different parts of the assignment. i passed all the test cases well before the deadline and that took so much pressure off of me. overall a challenging unit, but very rewarding if you've put in hard work. the teaching team is the most responsive and supportive you'll find at USYD so make good use of Ed and ask away.

Run!

The assignments absolutely killed meeeeeeeeeee ;-;

Terribly run, was told by tutors that the assignments/exams are designed to have high fail rates. Not suitable for beginners at all

This course is not meant for beginners. The assignments are way too hard for someone who just started learning programming to finish in two weeks. Even though I tried asking for help on the assignments, they specifically told us that they will not be providing any assistance. For reference, I have never done anything programming or computing related in my life and my friends in the same course who have had lots of previous experience were struggling as well. I see that some people who are also like me who never did programming before learnt alot so maybe its good if you still can't figure out if you want to pursue programming or not. Try this course, if you survive/enjoy you're meant to be doing it if you cry every night and hate it and think its too hard, drop it.

Great introductory unit to learn about programming.

For reference, I did this unit having never programmed before. It was an amazing unit, super challenging but I learnt heaps. The lectures weren't that well explained. John was confusing at times. That said, he was very well organised and efficient about moving the unit online. Viktor Kuo is an absolute legend and went above and beyond in explaining everything perfectly. Made a great assignment, and super insightful pre-work videos. Highly recommend this unit if you're prepared to put in the work. People complain because you've gotta work super hard.

This course gets a bad wrap, but it's not as bad as it sounds. Programming can be a challenging field indeed, but with dedication and persistence it is definitely worth while! I would highly suggest trying to familiarise yourself with topics such as data types (variables), if-else statements and loops as these will be the main building blocks of the course!