Seminars

Led by CS50’s own staff, seminars are an opportunity to dive more deeply into a topic of interest!

2024

Flying the Nest: Setting Up Your Local Development Environment

In this short seminar, I’ll walk you through the process of flying the Codespaces nest and setting up your laptop for local development. I will focus on setting up tools that we’ve used in CS50, such as VSCode, Python and Git (behind the scenes!). Towards the end, I’ll also briefly talk about some other tools you may want to look into yourself that I can’t cover in detail here, and give some general guidance for next steps!

How To Use Git and GitHub

The differences between Git and GitHub, command line usage, how to clone a repository for working on projects, and how to collaborate on code using push/pull/merge.

2023

Foldable/Dual-Screen Form Factors

Thinking about CS50 final project ideas, come learn about foldable mobile devices from the developers at Microsoft. Foldable mobile devices facilitate unique user experiences, especially around multitasking and pen input. Learn about the dual-screen Surface Duo 2 and how to build web apps that can adapt to two screens using web standard CSS and JavaScript. You can build and test fold-aware designs on the desktop, and optionally test with an Android emulator. You can even ship progressive web apps (PWAs) via Google Play, like any other Android app.

Collaboration and Version Control with Git

Have you wondered how you might work with your final project team without all sitting at the same device and taking turns typing code? Have you ever created a Backup_4.zip as you worked on a problem set to ensure you have a working version to revert to if you messed things up? Ever landed on a GitHub repository and had no idea how to download the files? Join us to learn how the pros handle these situations using an incredibly powerful command-line tool called Git!

Developing Your Project Locally with VS Code

Join us to learn how use VS Code locally (and offline!) on your own computer, unlocking new development possibilities! We’ll walk you through how to create your own development environment with Python, SQLite, and more, so that you can work with some of the most common technologies used in CS50 final projects.

Mac

Windows

Making Small-Scale 2D Games with LĂ–VE 2D and Lua

Have you ever wanted to know how to create 2D games for profit or pleasure? In this one-hour session, you will learn (a) how to design a small-scope game that can be created within fourteen days, (b) how to get started using the LĂ–VE 2D framework to create your 2D game, and (c) how to avoid the three landmines of small-scope game design. For less comfortable and more comfortable programmers alike, this session will help you see the overarching steps to creating your 2d game.

Introduction to Machine Learning

Interested in applying machine learning in your CS50 Final Project? We are hosting a seminar to give a brief overview of machine learning, implementations of machine learning models in Python, and finding good datasets for your ML model! Look forward to seeing you in our seminar soon!