CS50 on Telegram
The official channel of Harvard's famous CS50 intro to computer science: bite-size explainer videos from the teaching team, free livestreams and course news.
What it is
@cs50x is the official Telegram channel of CS50, the intro to computer science that grew out of a Harvard lecture hall into a free online course taken all over the world. The channel bio describes the team as the Fifty Foundation, led by David J. Malan, making "theatrical" courses in computer science and math, free for all. CS50's official Linktree points to this exact channel, so it's the real thing, not a fan page.
Posts are in English, with the odd one in Spanish or Portuguese when the course gets a new dub.
Why we picked it
It doesn't flood your feed. You get a few posts a month, and most of them are short clips where someone from the teaching team takes on a single question. Brian Yu explains P versus NP, and why C and Rust run faster than Python. Carter Zenke talks about escaping tutorial hell and keeping your fundamentals sharp even when AI can write the code. Colton Ogden pushes back on the idea that learning to code no longer matters.
Over the summer the team ran a free, seven-chapter livestream series on YouTube about how AI actually works, with no background required. In August CS50x launched fully dubbed in Spanish and Portuguese, and in September they announced another online run of the course through the University of Oxford. All of that lands in the channel as it happens.
Where to start
- Scroll back through the summer posts and watch a couple of clips to see if the teaching style clicks for you.
- Find Brian Yu's video on P and NP. It's a nice test of how simply a hard idea can be explained.
- If you keep putting off learning to code, start with the one about tutorial hell.
- Keep an eye out for livestream announcements; you can watch them live for free.
Who it's for
People starting to learn programming, or thinking about it. People already working through CS50 who want course news without hunting for it. And anyone who likes computer science explained with some energy instead of a monotone.
Quick answers
Is this the official CS50 channel? Yes. It's linked from CS50's official Linktree.
What language is it in? Mostly English, with occasional posts in Spanish and Portuguese.
How often does it post? A few times a month. No spam.
