Review of Visual Introduction to Algorithms
Online learning has been on a tear as the world chugs towards digization and the 2020 pandemic has put the Ed-tech industry growth on steriods. In the crowded market, one company differentiating its offerings from the rest of the pack is Educative.io — its courses on fundamental, advanced and niche computer science topics allow learners to execute code and applications from within the browser. We recently had the opportunity to review the course: A Visual Introduction to Algorithms listed at Educative.io and wanted to share our review of it so that you can decide if it’s worth your time or not. Read on our $0.02.
To give you a brief overview of what is in store for you if you do decide to take on this course, it is a derivative of Algorithms by Dartmount Computer Science professors Thomas Cormen and Devin Balkcom and also of the Khan Academy computing curriculum team. The estimated completion time of this course is about 14 hours as listed by Educative.
Right off the bat, our initial impressions were that this is a course which would be better suited to a newbie as it is a beginner level course, or to someone who is looking to change careers and shift to Computer Science. This course can also be a good guide to someone who needs a refresher on the basics of algorithms but we would not recommend this to those who are already pursuing a career in Computer Science. In this course, you learn introductory Computer Science algorithms along with binary search, asymptotic notation (which includes Big-Theta notation, Big-O notation and Big-Omega notation), selection sort, insertion sort, merge sort, quick sort, graphs and much more.
This course offers an easy to learn template with plenty of videos, challenges, quizzes and coding environments (with multiple programming languages like Java, Python, C++, JS etc) which makes it easy to understand each topic and apply in practise as you get to learn the concepts interactively in contrast to dry book reading.
This course will help you with entry level jobs and job interviews only, so don’t expect any high-end return from it. However, this is a great first step in the professional ladder that you are about to climb in the Computer Science field and this course will act as a prerequisite to many of the advanced Computer Science courses that you may be planning to take in the near future. You have to start somewhere and this is a great course to start off with. It can not only help you in interviews but also can help you perform well in your tech-career.
There are 60 detailed lessons in which there are videos explaining each and every lesson with examples. There are 2 quizzes, 70 coding challenges, 11 code snippets, 11 playgrounds and 166 illustrations.
Simply sign up and start learning, no need to setup, install or wait for long annoying downloads to complete. It is all in the cloud so it is accessible from virtually anywhere. Also, with the option to write and run the code from the browser, it makes it extremely practical, making it an all-in-one learning platform.
At the end of the course there is also a completion certificate and you can apply for it and share it on your LinkedIn profile.
Oh, and did we mention it is free? Yes, for the time being, this course is free at Educative.io. So, this makes an excellent resource with zero investment required.
There are many similar courses on the web such as; Introduction to Algorithms in JavaScript(Udemy), Intro to Algorithms(Udacity) and Algorithms part 1 (Coursera), however, none of these courses offer as much value as A Visual Introduction to Algorithms does as these are either too long or too time consuming.
Other than this, if you are interested in learning a bit more about algorithms, there are plenty of similar courses on Educative.io. such as; Data Structures & Algorithms in Python and Mastering Data Structures and Sorting Algorithms in JavaScript.
Furthermore, if you want to learn about interview courses, we have a separate blog on them. You can click here to check them out.
Although the course in this review is free, most Educative.io. courses are not. There is no need to worry though as there are ways in which you can get courses at cheap prices. Click here to find out more.
Conclusion
A Visual Introduction to Algorithms at Educative.io. is a course that is definitely worth your while. It offers a great learning experience and can definitely help you in any entry level job in the Computer Science field.
