“This. Is. CS50,” David J. Malan ’99 announced as he began the first lecture of Harvard’s flagship computer science course CS50: An Introduction to Computer Science.

CS50 is exceptional for its size, its resources and the cult of personality around its charismatic leader. It is more than just a class at Harvard; it is a cultural touchstone, a lifestyle, a ...

CS50, which requires no prior programming experience, covers topics including abstraction, algorithms and data structures as well as programming languages such as C, Python and SQL. The course serves ...