[elrzn]

A great programmer, sure! A good developer... I don't think so :) But I'm not here to discuss semantics.

I wouldn't recommend that course at all and I would even rate it as an utter failure.

It is not aimed to people with basic programming skills. The code snippets mostly consist of complex, clever one-liners and the examples are bit unfortunate.

You just need to take a look at the forums and see the prevailing discontent. Folks who had just completed CS101 were just not able to get past the very first units. And instead of addressing this problem, they just apologized and (rightly) ranked the course under the advanced category!

He'll be better off reading PAIP. Which is an excellent, timeless book. And still the best way to learn Common Lisp IMO.

Norvig has all the potential to be an excellent teacher, but he should stay away from mentoring introductory courses.

[lurking_lurker]

Yeah, I just finished going through Unit 1 and I didn't feel like I was learning that much from him and his cleaver, but a bit obscure, one-liners. I'm thinking about looking at the Coursera.org courses.