I loved the Google IT Support Certificate program and was so looking forward to loving this first course in a new Google Certificate program, Python for Automation. Sadly, I cannot recommend this course to anyone, really. Especially not beginners.

It's like an AirBnB property that looks like its going to have everything you need, but then you commit and discover you are actually left to fend for yourself on Survivor Island. The short videos are easy to watch, but do not prepare you for the exercises. Sure, it was a good prompt to spend hours and hours teaching myself what the Python basics needed to complete the quizzes and projects. But this isn't what I signed up for a Coursera/Google course for. I doubt I would have started if I really new the time it would take me to finish, with 95% self-taught.

As others wrote here, as this course stands, it makes more sense to learn for free with great You-Tube tutorial (esp Corey Schafer), and with the free Downey book, Think Python and I may check out the less expensive popular Udemy course, among many others. I really can't see the value-add here. Just so so so different than the IT Support Certificate which was pitched perfectly.

Sure, people learn in different way, and my experience might not be yours. The main reason for my strong position on this course has to do with how the course is marketed - as empowering women and encouraging a more diverse talent pipeline. I would love to see the data on how this course empowered new women and diverse new talent to begin IT careers. How many new users start, filled with anticipation, and drop out by Week 3. Why not solve this problem with course revisions? Get feedback from your users. Please fill in the gaps between the encouraging video content and the (sometimes) "now we be Navy Seals" problem sets by providing abundant bridging exercises and relevant resources to encourage new users. I hope Coursera will look at the data and provide time estimates equal to what your intended user group actually needed to succeed in this course - and not drop out. I can honestly say this was one of the most unpleasant courses I've ever taken - and that's saying something.

the coding videos are relatively short and concise while the questions are extremely hard and does not match to the actual content. not really a buiggener friendly

I can't give this course higher than 1 star until they fix the bugs in the quizzes.

For those of you who say "It works for me, it's a problem in your code", you may not have enough experience with these types of bugs.

For Week 3 Quiz - While Loops, problems 3 & 4:

Bug observations:

1) Works intermittently. In problem 3, it kept saying "No Output" when running it. I switched from Edge (Chromium) browser to Chrome, and it worked. Same code. Then, I retook the test (still in Chrome), and problem 3 timed out even though it passed previously and the code was the same.

2) Code works fine in an external IDE such as VS Code and PyCharm, but when typed in manually into Coursera, it will time out or say "No Output".

3) Problem 4 will keep outputting a progress bar when you run it with messages saying "Compiling, uploading, going to the moon and back,..." before finally outputting the correct solution. Then when submitting the quiz, it "Times Out After 5" No doubt due to 'going to the Moon and back'.

My credentials:

I am a professional Software Engineer with over 13 years of experience working at Amazon and Microsoft. I have written production code in Java, C#, and Python among other languages.

This course lacks appropriate explanations. Quizzes are not reviewed with you and must be completed in a very specific fashion, or you'll get the program wrong. I wish more explanations and material was given. Great idea, poor execution.

As I had some previous Python experience, I completed this course in about a week. There is nothing here that you cannot get from free tutorials on YouTube. The auto-graders for the assignments are buggy and some of the concepts in the quizzes are not taught in the lecture videos. If you want to learn the basics of Python, you can do so for free on your own and do not need to pay for this course.

This course was really helpful in developing my coding skills in python.The exercises helped me to test my knowledge .Overall it was a really good for people like me who are just beginning with python

Despite actually have some decent foundations in Python and programming, I did not enjoy the course. The instructor is super friendly and the videos are fun enough, but the assignments got more annoying and more annoying with every subsequent quiz (where the focus, IMO, seems to be more on Math skills than actually learning the basics of a programming language). Certainly, you go on StackoverFlow to find the solutions, but then that's not truly learning, is it? The worst part is that the videos not prepare you for the assignments mentioned above.

If you enjoy a challenge, sure stick around, but - if you're like me and were actually interested in getting some practical word done in Python (I signed up to do an individual project - then you'll probably run out of patience.

To be honest, if I had been a true beginner, this would have put me off programming altogether. If you want to learn Python, just get: https://automatetheboringstuff.com/ or have a look at https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/8341335-learn-python-the-hard-way. There are countless free resources out there that are much more useful than this. Cancelled my subscription.

Examples are easy.. Labs are not for beginners..

Course presentation is good. Topic selection is good. Selected Strings, Lists, tuples and Dictionaries, using these program logic can be build. Examples are good and interesting. assignments are good.

This course is not totally for beginners. The practice problems of this course won't be solved only having the ideas from the videos in this course. I got away with this course as I am not a pure beginner.The main disgusting part of this course was the final project. It included some stuffs that were too much advanced for a beginner. Also, the coding environment here used for the final project have some bugs which made me feel really frustrated.Even, the discussion forum of this course is the worst among the courses I have completed in coursera. No staff responds to any problem of the learners. There is a mentor who just replies with a same single message to about 90% of the problems of the forum. He just vanishes after replying without following up the thread and don't reply to further problem. So, the support in this course is not good at all.That are the reason for my "One Star" rating.

"Hi. Here's a new concept.

"Now, demonstrate mastery of this concept. No, we didn't provide lots of practice with step by step instructions. We showed you one or two examples and then assumed you'd absorb it like Neo in the Matrix.

"Here's a practice quiz. Did you get the answer exactly right? Well tough, because there are 10^26 possible ways to answer, and only a few are right, and you'll need to smash your head against a wall until you figure the answer out, because we're not going to really help you."

I have half a dozen coursera certs. already, but this one is impossible if the programming language doesn't come naturally to you. I've never been so frustrated with an online course.

Would not recommend.

test are not working, or asking quetions on stuff that wasn't learned

An excellent course for those who want to boost their programming abilities on Python. It tackles diverse and challenging problems, for you to practice and round out every concept. Highly recommended!

The exercises in each module were really helpful and the course has covered all of the required bascis. People reading this, I will tell you not to skip the OOP module as it is the essence of python.

This is the worst course i have taken in this grouping so far. The jump from the examples that are shown in the videos and the required problems involve a huge, and unguided jump into the language. The problems in the quizzes seem to be attempting to apply lower language principles to a higher language like python creates a lot of confusion. I have taken a crash course in python over 6 years ago and this course made it WAY more challenging to understand. i eventually utilized a different method for teaching myself the amount of python necessary to complete these strange and misguided examples.

This is actually a really great start for beginners in python. I am an intermediate python developer so for me it was too basic, but still a nice refresher for all the basics that we sometimes forget.

Explaination is very poor and these videos aren't that much useful while solving quizzes. Instructor should use same IDE as student will going to use. Instructor is using another command to print some function and students are asked to return value. For basic level student this course is not handy at any point. This course is for those who have some basic knowledge in python previously. In case of practical knowledge also, I didn't feel I learned anything. It was just a waste of time.

The Google Brand Name is why I took this course. The video quality and graphics are excellent. The course content is good. Why only three stars? You need a decent background in Python before taking this course else plan to spend a lot of time learning Python basics outside the course just to pass. Also the quizzes are very tricky puzzles to solve which felt like pealing an onion with unnecessary complication for a beginner course. I found the final project easier and much more enjoyable than most of the quizzes. The "Social Justice" opinion content messages inside the course are not necessary to learn Python and better suited in a social studies course. Removing these unnecessary videos and adding a few more minutes of Python content for each week would make a world of difference. In the end the course is worth taking if you are going for the bigger certificate Google offers here or really want to quiz your basic Python knowledge. Else not.

I really loved the course. Tutor is great, she is very good at teaching. I was a beginner in Python programming, now I am familiar with more python. Thank you Coursera for providing me financial aid.

It's a Beginner friendly course, one is looking to start learning python must take it and begin their journey of learning Python, my friend told me about this course, and I am really thankful to him.

This course is really , If you are a begineer then you should really dive in to this course as this is begineer oreinted course and slowly drives you towards advancement .GO for this , ALL THE BEST!!

Very good crash course. Considering myself not a Python novice, maybe intermediate level, I even learned something new. Don't expect to be a Python expert after this, though, as it is a crash course.

Excellent intro to using Python. Not for the absolute beginner but if you have done some programming in Python this course will introduce you to all the 'basic' concepts real fast.

Don't start if you don't have good IT foundations and need this knowledge to automate some big IT tasks like hosting multiple servers etc. Useless for "normal" person. Also after Crash Course (which is fairly basic) you will not learn a lot of python or even practice it.

The biggest problem with this specialisation is lack of respect to the listener. Sorry Google but half of the time I was listening to assurances that I can do it and that I learn a lot. Because of that it is really hard to concentrate on those videos!

The information in the lessons are basic and do not prepare you for the quizzes, the quizzes (during the video) and the quizzes for each section seem to be very different from the actual video content. Reviewing the videos does not help, checking the forums might but at that point why have the videos?