Feedback from past students

Here’s what past students had to say in Spring 2021 (when only the 1.5-credit course, without labs, was offered). Comments are unedited and randomly ordered.

What would you like future prospective students to know about CS50 for MBAs?

  • I’m sure this class is amazing without Zoom.
  • It is a great survey course on a multitude of topics that will undoubtedly become part of your life whether at a startup or fortune 500 company.
  • Do not take this class. You will not learn anything and it eats up a tremendous amount of your time. Taking this class was my biggest regret in my academic career.
  • great course to enter the amazing space of computers and tech
  • I had a very steep learning curve in this course given my nonprofit background. It is an excellent way to get in touch with the tech-word.
  • I would say that this course doesn't really take a "top down" approach, but still a "bottom up" approach, similar to CS50. This course is more a simplified, truncated version of CS50.
  • That this is a must-take class!
  • Great class. The assignments require more time than most HBS classes
  • Highly relevant content for every future manager, right level of depth and speed.
  • This is not a learn how to code class
  • Great class if you know fairly little about CS. If you have some background may actually be too basic for you.
  • You don't need to be able to code and don't need to want to code ever, at all. Think of this as an important general knowledge course on all things computer science so you don't come across as a fool in meetings with engineers or IT specialists.
  • It's a lot of work but it's worth it!
  • It covers many important topics without diving deep into any one. Good to get a better general understanding of CS
  • great for making you feel like you're not completely in the dark
  • The material is a bit dry and far more of the "how it works" function than I expected. you will not learn to be proficient at all in any computer language.
  • It's a great course for beginners with very little background knowledge who want to gain exposure to wide range of topics in order to be able to speak the language of engineers.
  • As technology becomes ever present in our personal and business lives, I believe this class should be mandatory as part of the RC or EC curriculum! It's important to understand how technology works at a high-level if we truly wish to one day run and improve public and private enterprises.
  • It is going to be a fun class. David is a great professor and most of what you'll learn is tangible and has real world applications. You will also not feel threatened about tech jargon. Expect to dedicate some time to the assignments and classes though. Even though most stuff is simple, just getting a good grasp on the concepts might take some reading and thinking. Definitely more intense than the average HBS class
  • CS50 for MBAs is a survey class that allows you to understand high-level the basic concepts and mechanics of computer science in 2021. It is not however, a programming class and none of the topics are covered very thoroughly.
  • It was more work on non-coding assignments than I thought.
  • I found it to be very useful, but you need to spend more than half a semester if you want a true baseline understanding of computer science
  • You will not become a programmer through CS50, but you will learn how everything works together.
  • It is a great class to understand the big picture of a lot of things happening behind the scene that we often take for granted, as well as the challenges that engineers might face. It is really helpful if you want to become a manager, especially in the tech industry.
  • Push for fundamental understanding. Put in the time to do the assignments and coding! You learn by doing. This course will help you better understand the world.
  • Great building block for product roles.
  • It's a great class with the right balance - being taught from a managerial point of view.
  • CS is a really extensive topic. Programming is a small part of it. If you are going to do work related to digital there is a fair amount of MBA-level non-programming knowledge that you should invest in learning outside of the course as well. CS50 will give you a good table of contents to decide where to dive deeper.
  • This class is not about learning how to code.
  • CS50 for MBAs is a great course for people with no prior knowledge of computer science. People who already went through online coding courses will learn some new concepts, but won't improve their coding skills.
  • Every business student should take this course to have a minimum level of understanding of how CS works
  • Totaly worth it to wet your toes in this topic.
  • You can do it, even if you've told yourself that you're not technical or you don't understand this stuff. This course will help you break in to what seemed unintelligible before and give you the confidence and knowledge to continue to develop your skills.
  • It's a bigger time commitment than you might expect for a 1.5 credit class, but it's worth the effort.
  • Great as a computer science fundamentals course that gives you the confidence to then keep learning independently
  • If you are interested to enter or develop a career in tech take this class.
  • its a lot of work, but you will learn tons
  • Very high level overview of various CS topics. Some programming, but that programming does not require any prior knowledge.
  • It's great for students with no background in CS and interested in entering tech. Covers all the relevant topics at the right breadth and depth.
  • Good for learning basics of technology and CS.
  • CS50 provides a high-level overview of crucial technology concepts. The course is not designed to master coding or writing scripts.
  • The homework take a long time most of the time, and 2/3 is normal - don't freak out. At least that's what I'm telling myself.
  • Class and assignments are much more fun than what one would expect from a CS course.
  • Helpful to get more familiar with various important aspects of computer science.
  • Assignments take longer than a case
  • CS50 is useful to understand the breadth and some depth of various CS components.
  • It's more work than you might think, so be prepared.
  • There's currently a lot of emphasis on the theoretical knowledge of computer science, cloud computing, privacy and security, IT, etc.; the curriculum is limited in terms of actual programming time and education. If you are interested solely in the programming aspect, this might not be the course for you.
  • You will learn the basics of everything and become an expert in nothing. At the end of the day you will be able to ask the right questions and have a general understanding of computer science and software.

What would you say was your biggest takeaway from CS50 for MBAs?

  • Knowing the fundamentals to have a better sense of which questions to ask later on, and know where to look for answers.
  • Hard to boil down to one thing as the class covers a variety of topics. I feel more confident, however, in my ability to talk to an engineer and to further deepen my knowledge in certain areas.
  • A functional understanding of the technology that makes our work lives possible is important for us as future managers and leaders to understand what is possible, and what constraints we may run into.
  • That the seemingly small decisions you make in the beginning of creating a website / product are some of the most important decisions to make.
  • I don't know if i have huge takeaways. I learned tidbits on different topics (security, AI etc.) If I have any "bigger" takeaway it is that software engineers face lots of "tradeoffs" and often have strong "philosophies" on how things should be done. These trade-offs and philosophies extend beyond "programming" or "engineering" and cover direct business/MBA topics. I should try to be fluent in these tradeoffs and philosophies early in my career, even if I don't know how to program.
  • There's no 'secret sauce' around programming / coding, and no reason that you need a high level degree in computer science to understand the basics. It's possible to achieve a lot with code with just a learning mindset and a resilience in the face of errors.
  • Computer science is vast and complex. At the stage we are in our lives (MBAs), it's unlikely we will ever be as competent as someone who has spent their career coding, so it's always a good idea to outsource CS tasks to the most competent party available, instead of trying to learn how to do everything yourself.
  • coding basics are understandable and you can learn with practice
  • Many concepts can be understood if we use common logic.
  • - Understanding how the internet works in general - Understanding different languages on a high level and their application - Understanding the tasks of a coder / software engineering in an organization
  • Security should be a number one priority if your company manages important data.
  • Understanding how technology works
  • That I should have studied computer science in undergrad, not finance. HBS should have a required CS class in each of the four semesters.
  • Computer science is not a black box! I now have some idea of core concepts that I can muddle my way through an idea and look up what I need to know.
  • It is important to understand, at some level, how and why things function the way they do.
  • You need to interpret the situation in both business and technology angles! To do that, you should understand how engineers think.
  • High level conceptual understanding of important technological building blocks.
  • That I need to more deeply understand how to code in order to stay conversational in many facets of business.
  • Tech is complicated, but revolve around a few key concepts, going all the way back to simple bits. I am also not threatened by a lot of the tech jargon anymore and understand how all the puzzle pieces of the tech industry fit together
  • You can just scratch the surface... With the time we can dedicate, and a so generalist scope, it's only possible to get a basic idea of what things are and how they work. But that's already super valuable!
  • loose my fear of computers and programming!
  • To take that course. Feels good to have at least a high-level understanding of key concepts of computer science.
  • The backend of how coding, the internet and computer science in general function at a high level.
  • Even when you’re not coding yourself, there’s a lot of work to be done to manage technical work.
  • This stuff matters.
  • How important and meaningful it is to have a basic understanding of the things that are so heavily integrated in my daily life. Moreover, the fact that computer science relies on very logical concepts and principles that are learnable even for people for whom the topic was an absolute black box.
  • Understanding a few basic concepts allows you to understand a lot of other phenomenon. This course did a great job of covering many of those basic concepts, but the great thing is you can read about them easily and continue learning beyond CS50.
  • Technology is not as hard to understand as you may think.
  • the coding
  • How internet technologies work. I now have a better understanding of how someone surfing the web actually happens.
  • Security measures for myself and my company
  • Technology is complicated - the internet is super complicated - but you can still develop a rudimentary understanding of this to support your future tech career.
  • Software / technology design and decisions can have a very serious impact on the business strategy and performance, and all managers should have at least a basic understanding of elementary building blocks to be effective leaders in the software-driven world.
  • Familiarity with new languages (Python, SQL, HTML, CSS).
  • It claims to be a 1.5 credit class, but it requires more work than all my other classes combined.
  • The ability to use programming in day-to-day business activities (e.g. SQL, Python)
  • Computer science is a very broad field and it is difficult to understand deep technical details of different subjects (servers, AI, algorithms) by just taking a 1.5 credits class.
  • That I actually really enjoy writing code in Python, HTML, and CSS (I understand that we did the toddler version of this). If I had more time before my job I would do a coding bootcamp. It's awesome.
  • I thought this class helped lay the foundations for CS, gave me more confidence to have conversations with software engineers and helped me identify which area of interest I could dig into deeper.
  • I was about to gain a broad understanding of all of the components that make up the technology stack, from basic binary system to cloud computing.
  • I definitely have a better understanding for how computers, internet security, cloud computing, and various programming languages work together.
  • How computers, networks, and programs actually work at a conceptual level- and through that what are the risks and vulnerabilities that we should be aware of and what steps we can take to mitigate risk.
  • 30K foot view of various elements of IT including, composition and functionality of digital machines, the internet, basic coding, and security. Overall the most useful thing will probably the vocabulary I now have familiarity with.
  • It demystified a lot of concepts for me, like AI and various programming languages.
  • Life is just a bunch of 0s and 1s
  • A lot of coding is just using the internet to search how to execute a given function in a given language
  • Baseline understanding of key concepts, working knowledge of vocabulary
  • Learning computer science is more about learning a specific way of thinking, building, and problem solving rather than an specific coding language itself
  • Vulnerability of computer systems and progression of lower level code to higher level code.