edX Welcome to Python: Useful Basics, Tired Delivery

I completed edX's Welcome to Python around September or October 2025. At the time, I wasn't trying to become a Python developer. I mostly wanted some exposure to a programming language and to start understanding how code worked.

Python seemed a sensible place to begin. I'd also been told that learning it would be useful for AI, although looking back, the idea that I needed Python because so much AI technology is built with it wasn't particularly helpful advice for what I actually wanted to do.

The useful part was much simpler: it got me used to thinking in a programming way.

Useful foundations

The course gave me a first look at the basic patterns that appear across programming languages: variables, logic, functions, strings and the general structure of writing instructions for a computer.

That foundation has been more useful than the Python syntax itself.

Since then, I've found that languages often share similar ideas and structures. You don't necessarily need to be able to write everything yourself to recognise what you're looking at, follow the logic or spot where something might have gone wrong.

That became useful later when I was working on Route 26 for MyTourneyTime, which involved code for calculating different fixture and route possibilities.

So the course did its basic job.

Unfortunately, almost everything around those fundamentals felt tired.

It felt very dated

The teaching videos were the biggest problem. Some felt decades old. The main instructor was perfectly good, but the presentation around him often looked like something from the late 1980s or early 1990s.

At times, it felt like I should have been doing the exercises on a ZX Spectrum!

The coding exercises could also be frustrating. Your underlying logic might be correct, but a small mismatch in an expected output string could still result in the answer being marked wrong. That could send you back through otherwise correct code looking for a programming mistake when the actual problem was something trivial like wording or spelling.

By the end, I wasn't particularly engaged. I was mostly working through the remaining material so I could say I'd finished it.

Too much selling

The other thing that damaged the experience was the constant push to upgrade.

The course itself was free, but I remember being repeatedly prompted to pay for the verified version and certificate. I believe the certificate was over $100 at the time.

I understand why course providers need to make money, but for a basic introductory course, it felt excessive. This wasn't a qualification I was going to use to get a job. I was simply trying to learn the fundamentals.

The constant prompts made the platform feel more interested in converting me into a paying customer than helping me learn.

And that is exactly what I did.

I wanted something more practical and hands-on, which led me to the University of Helsinki's Python Programming MOOC.

I wouldn't recommend this particular edX course today. There are too many better ways to learn the basics. But I am glad I learned some programming fundamentals early on.

Even with AI coding agents doing far more of the writing now, having enough programming literacy to recognise patterns, inspect code and understand roughly what is happening is still useful.

Just don't disappear down the rabbit hole of thinking you need to master a language before you can start building.