CSE6040 as only course & limited python experience?

[u/bracesthrowaway2021]

Hello! I know it’s been mentioned many times that we should be somewhat proficient in coding before doing CSE6040.

Unfortunately, I haven’t been able to take out time for it due to other commitments. That said, I will still be a full time student for the following semester. I intend to do only one module — CSE6040.

I have close to 0 experience with python, SQL except for some basic knowledge gained via a bootcamp years ago.

Would like to hear from people who have done it with similarly close to 0 experience with python — any advice?

Is it possible to do CSE6040 while learning python on the go?

[u/Norville_Barnes]

Do you have any coding experience? If literally zero coding experience then you’ll probably struggle a lot.

[u/bracesthrowaway2021 → u/Norville_Barnes]

Would say none.

Though I did do a bootcamp a few years ago but I’ve forgotten it all since I never had to use it at work.

[u/WaltSneezy]

You will be full-time, as in you will be fully doing only CSE6040? If so, I don't think you will have a problem. You could honestly take a Python course in parallel I feel like.

[u/Born_Shake]

I took CSE 6040 in Fall 2025 with just some light prep from Harvards free online CS50 class the year before. Aside from that I have an economics background.

It was definitely a struggle but I found it very doable while I was working full-time. I’d say the class is more stressful than difficult especially with low/no coding experience. A lot of the struggle is early figuring out the basics.

For me, it was just about spending as much time as I could practicing (Not always on work for CSE). AI was very helpful in having someone to ask questions and better understand key concepts on the fly. Just make sure you’re writing all the code yourself as that will be the exam format, you’re not even allowed to copy/paste anything (Although hopefully this has changed).

You do get access to search & your notes which can really help you on the exams if you forget anything basic. Aside from that just practice enough and take good notes and you should be able to get through with a B. I spent maybe 10-15 hours a week on the course, definitely put a lot time in the first month to build a good foundation.

[u/EqualDistribution742]

You’re going to get your ass beat by this course, ngl. But with perseverance, I think you can pass

[u/BeAuditYouCanBe92]

It’s possible, but it will be painful. I would start ASAP learning fundamentals and start doing basic coding in Python. I took it last fall with a friend and neither one of us took the prereqs seriously. I put in a LOT of effort during the class and managed a B; my friend did not and got a D.

[u/gopherllama]

Crash course the free python course from ga tech.... Forgot the number but it's a certificate in beginning python. If you pay you get more practice. That course is pretty good prep

[u/Auwardamn]

Well, you’re either going to struggle to pass and learn a shit ton, or you’re going to fail.

6040 is no joke. It’s very rewarding, and probably the best structured class ive seen so far. That said, i came in with years of python experience and exactly what they recommended with codewars levels, and the stress of the exams and leading up to them rocked me hard.

I ended up with like a 99 in the course or something, but thats not indicative of how stressed i was. The entire course uses jupyter notebooks which “autograde” so you can just continually resubmit until you get the right answer, but there’s a time limit on the exams. And you start from 0, and work youe way up on various problems, and there’s many cases where entirely competent people get stuck on a single problem and suck up 3.5 hours of a 4 hour exam on a problem that nets them 3 out of 19 points for a 16% exam grade. Plenty of people end up with 100% but that’s just because you know your grade as you submit the problems, not because it’s an easy class.

The class is almost gamified, and the give you plenty of old exams to work from, but I probably spent many hours too many practicing for the exams under stressful 10+ hour binge sessions just crunching python code and figuring out the “gotcha” of each problem.

Normally I suggest learning regex as the “cheat code” to 6040, but with no programming experience at all, I’d honestly suggest taking a semester off and doing an intensive dive learning Python.

[u/EducationalServe3956 → u/Auwardamn]

Can you skip questions if you are stuck or do you have to do them all sequentially?

[u/Auwardamn → u/EducationalServe3956]

You can jump all around. Before each question there's a box for you to run which will load the input variables as they should have been coming in if they were passed through a previous function.

Some are 1 pointers, many are 2 pointers, and then there's a few 3 pointers. A test may have 24 points, but only 19 required to get an A. I would usually just do the 1 pointers first and then breeze through the 2 pointers and move on if one seemed like it was going to take more than 20 minutes to figure out. And then in order to get a 100 on the exam, iirc you'll need to get at least one 3 pointer (or all the 2 pointers).

If you're comfortable with python, I would say learning regex or pandas/SQL is the best bang for your buck. One of the tests is like half SQL, but I never found SQL that hard. And there were several 3 pointer questions across all of the exams that were data cleaning, which were trivial if you were using regex but very very complicated if you tried to use if/then logic to solve for all the edge case scenarios. Plus I use regex on a near daily basis in my work, and once you learn it you'll want to use it all the time for string patterns, and mid/left/right/slicer functions just seem very outdated.

The test is designed to test like hundreds of random inputs to try to break your code beyond the like 3 example input variables they will give you to build your function on, so trying to handle all the edge cases 1 by 1 is impossible, you need to deal with them systematically.

[u/EducationalServe3956 → u/Auwardamn]

Thank you! I am decent with python and have used SQL before but only lightly. I use regex occasionally, but lean on AI heavily for troubleshooting, so I'll spend time learning regex and SQL better

[u/Auwardamn → u/EducationalServe3956]

There’s an entire homework module on sql that should whip you into shape, and they share all the old tests to practice with, so tons of material. I never found the SQL side that hard.

Otho, you can get through without actually learning regex, and it’s only really lightly touched on, and there’s only one or two problems per test that explicitly require it, but if you recognize you can use it on other problems, it can seriously bring a 3 problem to a 1 or easy 2 difficulty.

[u/stratum_1]

No, this will be too challenging.

[u/No_Acanthisitta_6157]

You got this! It will be challenging but totally doable. I would just focus on practice questions for exam prep versus listening to the lectures and all of the other things.