Web Video / CS50

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CS50 is a lecture course provided by Harvard University to teach students about programming and technology. Hosted by David Malan, each season spans ten weeks of lectures going over a variety of topics, starting with Scratch and C, and working their way up to more complex workings, such as SQL, JavaScript, and Flask. Starting in 2022, the courses have been made readily available online to students outside of Harvard, allowing more people to take the course.

Tropes used in the lectures:

• Brutal Bonus Level: Some problem sets feature alternate assignments depending on how confident the student feels in solving them, with Set 1 and 6's Mario and Cash being two examples. Of particular note, however, is Week 3's choice between Runoff and Tideman, warning students not to attempt the latter unless they are certain they can complete it.

• Early Game Hell: Downplayed, as most problems in CS50x's first three lecture sets are not particularly tricky, but sets 4 and 5 contain assignments that make use of malloc, a very dangerous command if used improperly, making the switch to Python in set 6 very relieving.
• Filler: Some seasons feature episodes outside of the 10-week lectures. The 2024 season, for example, has a lecture on Artificial Intelligence between Weeks 6 and 7, and a lecture on Cybersecurity after Week 9.
• Flipping the Bird: Played With in 2024's Week 0; Malan counts in binary on his hand, but when he gets to 4, he covers his hand up due to it being this trope.
• Mundane Solution: In Week 6, David demonstrates that the previous week's assignments are much simpler in Python than in C.
• Ripped from the Phone Book: Malan tears out pages from a phone book until he finds the number he wants to demonstrate how algorithms work.
• Shout-Out: Many lectures feature references to Nintendo IPs. For example, Lecture 5 in the 2024 season has a digital phone book featuring the names of characters from Super Mario Bros., The Legend of Zelda, and Animal Crossing. In addition, one assignment in Week 1 is named Mario, tasking players with arranging blocks into a staircase like in Super Mario Bros. 1.
• Wake-Up Call Boss: Week 4 of CS50x is the first truly difficult week of the course, as the class starts distributing code to students to work off of, and mistakes become all the more damaging if not fixed properly. Of note is that the week introduces malloc, which assigns space to values where needed, but can cause memory leaks if the allocated code is not freed later down the line.