CS50 (Computer Science 50) is an on-campus and online introductory course on computer science taught at Harvard University and Yale University. In 2016, CS50 became available to high school students as an Advanced Placement Computer Science course. The on-campus version is Harvard's largest class with 800 students, 102 staff, and up to 2,200 participants in their regular hackathons. [1] [2]
The course material is available online for free on the edX platform, with a range of certificates available for a fee. As of 2022, [update] this online version, called CS50x, teaches the languages C, Python, SQL, HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. It also teaches fundamental computer science concepts including arrays and data structures, and the Flask web framework. [3] The 2021 iteration of the course introduced three new additional lectures on computer security, artificial intelligence, and the ethics of technology. [4]
The lead instructor is Harvard professor David Malan. [5] Doug Lloyd and Brian Yu [6] were also former members of the CS50 course staff and its lecturers. [7] Facebook co-founder Mark Zuckerberg and former Microsoft Chief Executive Officer Steve Ballmer have given guest lectures. [8] [9] The CS50 course first appeared on-campus in 1989.
Several follow-on programs exist, focusing on web programming, artificial intelligence, game development, and mobile apps.
Lectures are recorded and uploaded to several services including iTunes U, EdX, and YouTube. Additional video "walkthroughs" are recorded with professors and volunteer students. Course questions, called problem sets, or "psets" for short, are available in both PDF and HTML formats. Students can upload problem set answers, and some questions are graded by automation. Students can also use special software to check their code in the cloud. In 2016, CS50 became the first university course to offer students the possibility to watch all lectures entirely in virtual reality. [10] In 2022, the course shifted from CS50 IDE to a web-based version of VS Code based on GitHub codespaces and now the lectures are available in 4K HDR and SDR. [11]
CS50 offers several follow-up courses, including:
CS50 also provides courses for people who are new to programming or who want to understand more about technology.
The SANS Institute is a private U.S. for-profit company founded in 1989 that specializes in information security, cybersecurity training, and selling certificates. Topics available for training include cyber and network defenses, penetration testing, incident response, digital forensics, and auditing. The information security courses are developed through a consensus process involving administrators, security managers, and information security professionals. The courses cover security fundamentals and technical aspects of information security. The institute has been recognized for its training programs and certification programs. Per 2021, SANS is the world’s largest cybersecurity research and training organization. SANS is an acronym for SysAdmin, Audit, Network, and Security.
The School of Computer Science (SCS) at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, US is a school for computer science established in 1988. It has been consistently ranked among the best computer science programs over the decades. As of 2024 U.S. News & World Report ranks the graduate program as tied for No. 1 with Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Stanford University and University of California, Berkeley.
Computer science and engineering (CSE) is an academic program at many universities which comprises approaches of computer science and computer engineering. There is no clear division in computing between science and engineering, just like in the field of materials science and engineering. However, some classes are historically more related to computer science, and other to computer engineering. CSE is also a term often used in Europe to translate the name of technical or engineering informatics academic programs. It is offered in both undergraduate as well postgraduate with specializations.
DigiPen Institute of Technology is a private for-profit university in Redmond, Washington. It also has campuses in Singapore and Bilbao, Spain. DigiPen offers bachelor's and master's degree programs. It also offers summer programs for students in grades K-12, online courses, and year-long high school programs.
The Arab Academy for Science, Technology & Maritime Transport (AASTMT) or (AAST) is a regional university operated by the Arab League, which runs programs in marine transportation, business, and engineering. AASTMT started as a notion in the Arab League Transport Committee''s meetings on 11th of March, 1970. The Academy's inception was in 1972 in the city of Alexandria, Egypt. After that it expanded into Cairo.
The Harvard–MIT Program in Health Sciences and Technology, or HST, is one of the oldest and largest biomedical engineering and physician-scientist training programs in the United States. It was founded in 1970 and is the longest-standing collaboration between Harvard University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). Within the program, graduate and medical students are registered with both MIT and Harvard and may work with faculty and affiliated faculty members from both communities. HST is a part of MIT's Institute for Medical Engineering and Science and forms the London Society at Harvard Medical School.
Scratch is a high-level, block-based visual programming language and website aimed primarily at children as an educational tool, with a target audience of ages 8 to 16. Users on the site can create projects on the website using a block-like interface. Scratch was conceived and designed through collaborative National Science Foundation grants awarded to Mitchel Resnick and Yasmin Kafai. Scratch is developed by the MIT Media Lab and has been translated into 70+ languages, being used in most parts of the world. Scratch is taught and used in after-school centers, schools, and colleges, as well as other public knowledge institutions. As of 15 February 2023, community statistics on the language's official website show more than 123 million projects shared by over 103 million users, over 804 million total projects ever created, and more than 95 million monthly website visits.
The Penn State College of Information Sciences and Technology, also known as the College of IST, opened in 1999 as the information school of Pennsylvania State University. Headquartered at the University Park campus in University Park, Pennsylvania, the college's programs are offered at 21 Penn State campus locations. Dr. Andrea Tapia currently serves as the college's interim dean.
Andrew Yan-Tak Ng is a British-American computer scientist and technology entrepreneur focusing on machine learning and artificial intelligence (AI). Ng was a cofounder and head of Google Brain and was the former Chief Scientist at Baidu, building the company's Artificial Intelligence Group into a team of several thousand people.
Snap! is a free block-based educational graphical programming language and online community. Snap allows students to explore, create, and remix interactive animations, games, stories, and more, while learning about mathematical and computational ideas. While inspired by Scratch, Snap! has many advanced features. The Snap! editor, and programs created in it, are web applications that run in the browser without requiring installation. It is built on top of Morphic.js, a Morphic GUI, written by Jens Mönig as 'middle layer' between Snap! itself and 'bare' JavaScript.
Udacity, Inc. is an American for-profit educational organization founded by Sebastian Thrun, David Stavens, and Mike Sokolsky offering massive open online courses.
edX is a US for-profit online education platform owned by 2U since 2021. The platform's main focus is to manage a variety of offerings, including elite brand bootcamps.
William Eric Leifur Grimson is a Canadian-born computer scientist and professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he served as Chancellor from 2011 to 2014. An expert in computer vision, he headed MIT's Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science from 2005 to 2011 and currently serves as its Chancellor for Academic Advancement.
Deerwalk Institute of Technology provides extensive undergraduate programs, namely the Bachelor of Science in Computer Application and Information Technology (B.Sc.CSIT) and the Bachelor of Computer Applications (BCA). These programs are affiliated with Tribhuvan University.
David Jay Malan is an American computer scientist and professor. Malan is a Gordon McKay Professor of Computer Science at Harvard University, and is best known for teaching the course CS50, which is the largest open-learning course at Harvard University and Yale University and the largest Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) at EdX, with lectures being viewed by over a million people on the edX platform up to 2017.
David Silver is a principal research scientist at Google DeepMind and a professor at University College London. He has led research on reinforcement learning with AlphaGo, AlphaZero and co-lead on AlphaStar.
Georgia Tech Online Master of Science in Computer Science (OMSCS) is a Master of Science degree offered by the College of Computing at Georgia Tech. The program was launched in 2014 in partnership with Udacity and AT&T and delivered through the massive open online course (MOOC) format. Georgia Tech has received attention for offering an online master's degree program for under $7,000 that gives students from all over the world the opportunity to enroll in a top 10-ranked computer science program. The program has been recognized by the University Professional and Continuing Education Association, Fast Company, and the Reimagine Education Awards for excellence and innovation.
Michael Genesereth is an American logician and computer scientist, who is most known for his work on computational logic and applications of that work in enterprise management, computational law, and general game playing. Genesereth is professor in the Computer Science Department at Stanford University and a professor by courtesy in the Stanford Law School. His 1987 textbook on Logical Foundations of Artificial Intelligence remains one of the key references on symbolic artificial intelligence. He is the author of the influential Game Description Language (GDL) and Knowledge Interchange Format (KIF), the latter of which led to the ISO Common Logic standard.
Bruce Martin McLaren is an American researcher, scientist and author. He is a Full Professor at Carnegie Mellon University in the Human-Computer Interaction Institute and a former President of the International Artificial Intelligence in Education Society (2017-2019).