On April 23, Harvard University computer science professor David J. Malan tweeted a photo of himself after getting his first Pfizer vaccine at a Walmart in Wareham, Massachusetts. Like many, he had made an appointment by using the superstore’s online vaccination booking system.
Harvard computer science professor David J. Malan tweeted a photo of himself after getting his first ... [+]
Shortly after his tweet went out, Malan received a message from Anirudh Konduru, a recent graduate from a university in Bangalore, India: “Hey David! Noticed you got your vaccine at Walmart. Thought you’d be interested to know that the guy who wrote a significant part of the backend code that handles Walmart’s online vaccine bookings, yours truly, first learnt how to code years ago from you, from CS50x. Thank you.”
CS50x is the free online version of CS50, Harvard’s popular introduction to computer science and the art of programming course, which has gained a cult-like following since Malan started teaching it in 2007. Harvard students can take the course for credit, either in-person or online, and since 2015, classes have been live-streamed to students at Yale.
However, Malan’s reach has gone well beyond the 800 students who fill the auditorium seats at Sanders Theatre on Harvard’s campus. While many of the students who sign up for CS50x – more than two million to date – eventually drop out, the payoff for those like Anirudh who muscle through and complete all the assignments and tests can be life-changing. Malan’s rise as a computer science evangelist can only be described as stratospheric.
Indeed, when the professor shared Anirudh’s Walmart note on his social media networks, his post went viral, garnering thousands of “likes” and congratulatory messages from former students and admirers across the globe.
“To think how many lives CS50 has touched like this,” one person commented on Malan’s Instagram account. “CS50 has created an entire generation of Computer Science kids,” wrote another.
Anirudh, 23, a software development engineer for Walmart Labs based in Bangalore, took CS50x when he was a high school senior in 2015. Uncertain about what he wanted to study at university – he was toying with a medical career – he felt that developing basic knowledge of computer science would be a good idea. While he was initially drawn to CS50x due to the brand, the usefulness of what was taught compelled him to finish the course, even as he graduated from high school and began university.
Anirudh Konduru, a Bangalore, India-based software development engineer and an alumnus of "CS50x," ... [+]
“The Harvard name helped legitimize the course but once you start the class and do a week or two, it’s the content that matters,” Anirudh said.
The attrition rate for so-called massive open online courses is notoriously high. Even highly produced mass online courses like CS50x don’t tend to retain students. Out of the 150,349 students who signed up for the class that ran from October 2012 to April 2013, just over 100,953 actually began the course, and only 1,388 received certificates. It is important to note, however, that most students don’t take the course to pursue a certificate.
Anirudh is an exception to the rule. Though he opted to pay a fee to earn a certificate, he said the course’s true value lies in the knowledge he gained from Malan’s weekly multiple-hour lectures covering concepts such as abstraction and algorithms, as well as introductions to programming languages C and Python.
The assignments “are where you learn most of the stuff,” he added, with homework comprised of problem sets requiring mastery of the coding concepts learned in class. Students are asked to build a spell checker, a website, even a game. “One of them took me a whole week before I cracked it,” he recalled.
After finishing CS50x, Anirudh decided to major in computer science, graduating from R. V. College of Engineering in Bangalore in 2019 and then joining Walmart Labs’ office in the same city. In June 2020, he began working on a team that was developing Walmart’s vaccination reservation system, which launched in August, initially for the distribution of regular flu vaccines and then later for those that protect against the coronavirus.
Similar to Harvard, many of the country’s most well-known universities – such as MIT and UC Berkeley - offer free online classes like CS50x via edX, a MOOC provider developed by Harvard and MIT in 2012. Classes as varied as Harvard’s Justice, an introduction to moral and political philosophy and Entrepreneurship in Emerging Economies, taught by Harvard Business School, are available to all who are interested in learning something new.
While noting that many students in countries like India are unable to benefit from free online classes because they lack access to computers and internet, Anirudh encourages his family and peers with resources to extend themselves and try out CS50x.
“This course helps build passion,” said Anirudh, who has been accepted to a graduate computer science program at the University of Pennsylvania, “especially when you go that extra mile to learn on your own.”
