As a biologist without any programming skills, I found this course REALLY difficult. That was totally unexpected as the description of the course states that no programming skills are necessary. I thought really hard to learn the Python by resolving Codeacademy exercises while trying to implement the language to solve the book problems. In other words, I felt that the platforms used in this course were very disconnected. In my opinion, it would be easier to learn python by directly learning how to solve simple biological questions instead of complicate ones presented in the book.

This course replies heavily (almost entirely) on codeacademy to teach the coding material. Unfortunately, the material chosen for this course does not line up with the courses supplied by codeacademy. If you want to follow the lesson plans as outlined here, you need to do multiple extra courses on codeacademy before you can reach the material discussed in the coursera lesson. As such, the estimated time for completion is drastically lower than the actual time to completion for people new to coding.

Although the course may introduce beginner based Bioinformatics and the overall coding is initially taught from a beginner level, it quickly evolves into a level of coding that I and many in the class did not understand given our lack of coding back ground. I would recommend taking a beginner python course followed by a basic data analytics with python course first. This is just so you can adequetly understand what youre doing with the data.

Stepik and codeacademy aren't the friendliest options for beginners. You can see that by the number of success on each Stepik exercise and the decreasing number of students each week.

I managed to undersand a great part of it mainly because I wasn't a beginner at either Biology nor Programming, but still, the programming part was hard.

This isn't really a course for beginners. I learned a few things about biology, sure. But if I hadn't already known Python code, I wouldn't have been able to figure out half of the exercises in this course.

This course is do-able if you're willing to put in the effort, but it is not an easy introductory course to bioinformatics.

The quizzes were extremely annoying, they weren't hard but for example with the final quiz: I would properly calculate the normalized probabilities but every possible version of me rounding it was incorrect. I proceeded to show a friend who has a PhD in mathematics and he was equally stressed by questions like this

The description of the course is misleading, you do have to know Python in order to fully focus on the biological problem. Requires more than 8 hrs per each coding section if you are beginner. Wouldn't mark the class as Beginner.

The course is hard for whose major is biology because there is no detailed explanation regarding algorithms. I do not recommend this course to people who have not studied programming.

the content is good but it is definitely not for beginners. the course content requires a lot of coding knowledge and basics of molecular biology to understand

The external tool was too complex for a beginner in programming, which defeats the purpose of the exercise. This made me lose interest very quickly.

Can be more interactive with videos for beginners for more comprehensive understanding. Otherwise, wonderful, highly informative content!

Very complex for students. Coding wise very dificcult to follow for beginners, but with perserverance you can understant the message.

Programming part not well explained and too difficult- it can clearly be seen from the comments that many people have the same issues

no 6 quiz of week 4 is bad in answering every time ans submit the right ans i got the wrong in after assessment. it may be improved

It's really helpful and amazing for those who know basic statistics, maths and programming. But it's not for beginners at all

Gets quickly very confusing and difficult. Also, do the Codeacademy Python class before even starting this course.

Programming Level is NOT FOR BEGINNERS. The Codecademy was useless when compared to the coding assignments given.

the coding aspect were neither clear nor easy enough for a biologist who is new to programming to grasp

Steptik images in week 4 aren't showing up which means its impossible to understand what's going on

in my opinion, this course is hard for beginners. i do not have computer background in programming

Too complicated for a beginner's course, the quizzes don't match the stepik chapters.

It is hard for beginners. Especially for some who has no computer lesson background.

It has been the most stressful and frustrating course, certainly not for beginners.

Its called Bioinformatics for "Beginners", when it is still extremely difficult.

This course is not for begginers. please change tag line.but good to learn