Ratings and Reviews for Using Python to Access Web Data

This course does introduce the beginning student to the web access aspects albeit in a rudimentary manner. This could have been a very informative and educational course but it was tarnished because of several shortcomings and errors. Pros ------ If you have not done any form of web-based programming or not familiar with that technology, this course does introduce a beginning programming student on the rudimentary aspects of accessing web data using Python. You will learn techniques such as creating sockets, connecting to a host and retrieving web pages as well as related third-party products that help you understand what's going on behind the scenes Cons ------ 1. The course presents complex code with no comments and no explanation of the more complex functions. You come away with a empty feeling of not having understood everything that you have learned. And that includes the assignments which use code provided by the instructor 2. The topics regarding XML and Json structures and access methodologies could have been explained in more detail. Chuck went over his code without explaining some of the key points which I had to discover on my own. Extremely challenging for newbies 3. I felt the assignments were confusing and not very challenging. I realize this is a beginner's course and therefore the level has to be kept down but I felt that a couple more (optional if necessary) assignments for some of us who want to delve deeper into this area would have been more educational 4. As far as some of the technology described in the course and the sample code provided for web scraping twitter info, what can I say....except that it was DISASTROUS! Chuck talks about using telnet to access web servers. But most of the students did not understand the concepts as was evident from the innumerable questions for help. It seemed like the teaching staff themselves were ill-prepared to answer telnet questions or perhaps thoroughly frustrated as evinced in their curt replies and a burning desire to skip questions related to telnet. This spiraling of telnet-related questions became so heavy that one of the mentors finally put the topic to eternal rest by stating..."I am going to close this thread because telnet has been deprecated since the videos were made and there is no reason wasting time on an obsolete method." All very well said, but all this frustration and anguish for both students and mentors about such an "obsolete" technology could have been squarely avoided had this topic been removed or a warning note placed. Same for the twitter code samples provided in this course, which did not work because of structural and policy changes implemented by twitter. Not the instructor's fault though. 5. Another frustrating experience was the lack of help provided for those who posted questions on the socket programs provided by the instructor. The programs were written for a MacOS environment and the exact same code fails miserably in a Windows environment. Sometimes the students make mistakes in typing the code, sometimes they are behind a firewall/proxy server which results in a run-time error. There have been innumerable posts about the socket errors faced by many students. It would have been helpful for the students to understand what they did wrong. One mentor, Tamara Brunnock, the teaching staff for this course cleverly sidesteps the original problem by a standardized cookie-cutter response "Try using Chrome Developer Tools instead". This exact phrase has been used in at least 30 responses and variations of this phrase in other responses. This tool is in no way related to the original Python program and does not help the student understand what went on in the program or how to understand the error. If a teaching staff member can respond to a legitimate student complaint on a programming problem by directing them to a third-party tool instead of addressing the original problem, it does not speak well of this course. I would have given this course a higher rating but after all the frustrations I encountered, the lack of adequate help from the staff and a lack of explanation of concepts used in the lectures have left me unsatisfied and unhappy with having spent big bucks on this course. This course needs a lot of upgrading to newer technologies and dissolution of obsolete technologies and non-functional code that is provided. By all means take this course but be prepared for a frustrated, time-consuming experience.

Dr. Chuck is the best! I had no problem getting to know about the intricate things mentioned in this course, because it was all explained by the prof very beautifully.

Little bit harder but well managed course!!thank you!!!!

Awesome Course.

very good course!!!!

course was interesting and the good platform to gain a good knowledge

little bit tough

The problems are too easy. Need more problems.

Excellent course

great