I just received a Certificate of Accomplishment with Highest Distinction for completing my first Udacity class: CS 101- Building a Search Engine.
I have to say that this class was much more challenging than I expected. I took the equivalent class at the University of Kansas while an undergraduate, but that was a long time ago. Since then I am basically a self-taught programmer. I took the class because I wanted to know what I missed while teaching myself how to program over the last few years.
Did I build a search engine? Kind of- I have the fundamentals of code that I might convert into PHP and use to create web crawler that I can use for a couple tools.
Did I learn the secrets of Google- after all Sebastian Thrun, a VP at Google helped with the course? Not really although I think I was given a look into the most basic form of the PageRank algorithm. In fact, the only question I missed on the final exam was converting the PageRank algorithm we were given to discount reciprocal links (might sound easy to you, but just try to write it into a program).
I’d recommend this class to anyone interested in learning to code. Although it is not imperative that I know how to code as a professional SEO, I have found my coding abilities to be very helpful.
