Computer Science: Programming with a Purpose
Princeton University · View on Coursera ↗
Taught by Robert Sedgewick, Kevin Wayne
Computer Science
About the course
The basis for education in the last millennium was “reading, writing, and arithmetic;” now it is reading, writing, and computing. Learning to program is an essential part of the education of every student, not just in the sciences and engineering, but in the arts, social sciences, and humanities, as well. Beyond direct applications, it is the first step in understanding the nature of computer science’s undeniable impact on the modern world. This course covers the first half of our book Computer
The dissent
The most-upvoted critical review (135 votes, 1.0★).
“But for you to pass the assignments you must build a runflat tyre that goes 1000 km/h for an infinite ammount of time and do that without using your arms or legs...”
Coursera's 4.7 comes from 1,393 ratings. Of those, 3.4% are 1–2★.
Starisk reads the reviews learners voted most helpful, and weights each by the square root of its votes: a review with 80 upvotes counts about five times one with 2. Unvoted reviews are not skipped out of laziness — by this model they carry no evidence that other students endorsed them.
That measures what the most-endorsed reviews say, not “true quality.” The rating distribution above is the whole population, so you can see the sample next to it.
Reviews read on 23 Oct 2026.Read them on Coursera ↗