According to ZDNet, veteran tech journalist David Gewirtz completed Harvard’s free CS50 certificate program in Computer Science for Python Programming in 2025, taking from March to early December. The program, offered via EdX, includes the legendary base CS50 intro course taught by Professor David Malan and a dedicated Python course, involving over 60 hours of lectures and roughly 80 programming assignments. While the courses can be audited for free, a verified professional certificate costs about $500, which some colleges may accept for credit. Gewirtz, who first coded on punch cards, took the courses to refresh his Python skills and see how top-tier programs now incorporate generative AI, which Harvard provides via a custom, course-trained ChatGPT tool. His final projects included a Scratch game and a Python-based image management tool, and he found the experience, while entirely self-paced with no direct instructor access, to be “fantastic” and a ton of fun.
Why learn to code if AI does it?
Here’s the thing: AI is a terrible programmer if you don’t know what you’re looking at. It’s wrong all the time, and it’s wrong with supreme, unshakable confidence. Gewirtz’s entire premise hits the nail on the head—you don’t learn to code just to write everything from scratch anymore. You learn to code so you can be a competent editor, architect, and auditor for your AI coding assistant. It’s the difference between using a power tool and being a carpenter. Anyone can turn on a saw, but you need the knowledge to know if the cut is straight, the wood is right, and the structure is sound. That’s the real career blueprint now. You’re not being replaced by the tool; you’re being upgraded to a tool manager, and that requires deep foundational knowledge.
Inside Harvard’s CS50 MOOC
So what’s the big deal with CS50? Basically, it’s not your typical “Learn Python in 21 Days” course. It throws you into the deep end with a tour of computing fundamentals, starting with visual Scratch, diving into low-level C to understand memory, and then moving up to Python, SQL, and web tech. That breadth is brutal but brilliant. It forces you to understand *why* Python does things a certain way, because you’ve seen the mess it’s abstracting away. Malan’s lectures are famously engaging, but Gewirtz confirms they move fast. And the workload is no joke. This is a real university course, just delivered online via EdX. The lack of direct instructor interaction, even for paying students, is a legit downside. Your questions go into a Discord void answered by anonymous helpers—could be a TA, could be a 15-year-old prodigy. You have to be comfortable with that.
The AI assistant and automated grading
Now, the AI component is fascinating. Harvard provides its own walled-garden ChatGPT, trained on course materials. It won’t spit out answers, but it will guide you. This is a smart, if imperfect, adaptation. It acknowledges the tool exists and tries to integrate it responsibly, unlike policies that just try to ban it. But Gewirtz says it ranged from “surprisingly helpful to infuriating,” which, honestly, is the universal review of every LLM ever. The automated grading is another double-edged sword. Immediate feedback is awesome. But when the grading bot rejects your code for a reason not in the spec, you enter a special circle of debugging hell. It teaches a very real, if frustrating, skill: sometimes the machine you’re talking to (the grader) has its own undocumented quirks. Sound familiar? It’s exactly like working with an AI coder.
Is the verified certificate worth $500?
Probably not for most people. Let’s be real. The knowledge is 100% free. You only pay if you need that verified certificate for a resume, a LinkedIn badge, or potential college credit. For a hobbyist or someone building skills to manage AI, just audit it. For professionals looking for structured upskilling in a foundational technology like computing, the certificate might hold some weight. It’s a serious time investment, though. Gewirtz spent nearly a year doing it piecemeal. But his conclusion is the key takeaway: in a world flooded with mediocre tutorials, this is a legit, world-class computer science education you can get for $0. And that skill—the ability to look at code and know if it’s good, safe, and right—is becoming one of the most valuable in tech. You can’t outsource your critical thinking to the AI, even if you outsource the first draft.
