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I want to take this course for a verified certificate but I'm not sure I will be able to finish by December 31, so I want some advice from people that have taken this course previously.

Should I try to tackle this task or would it be a waste of money and impossible to submit everything before the December 31 deadline?

As for my skill-set:

  1. I'm a mobile game developer with a year of experience but without any formal education.
  2. I studied programming for several years on my own.
  3. I'm quite confident at coding in C#, C++ and Lua. Also I know my way around OOP.
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    As sinister says, it is definitely doable, especially if you have some prior experience. The problem sets can sometimes be challenging but there's an huge amount of video material and online support. I have a similar background to you, and I work full time, and I was doing another course at the same time, and I still found it very manageable. I put in 10 to 20 hours a week over about 3 months. It really depends how much time and effort you are willing / able to put in.
    – Luke Van In
    Commented Jul 31, 2014 at 12:45
  • Thanks for your comment, Luke, you brought confidence into my heart :) Here I go then, it's time to put some certificate into my resume :)
    – Shironecko
    Commented Jul 31, 2014 at 13:01

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If one possesses prior knowledge in programming, then it should not take much time for him/her to complete this course. Only 5 months are left for deadline, so of course one needs to have a good amount of time to spend for the lectures. But the real problems occur at problem sets, when you can't figure out exactly what is going wrong with your code!

But all these have nothing to do with your choice of taking CS50 for a certificate neither verified nor honor code. I am currently enrolled in the course and here is how it looks when you opt for a honor code certificate.

So better opt for honor code certificate first, then when you have completed a good portion of the course much before the deadline, upgrade it to verified certificate. If you fail to complete the course in this way, then you shall save your money and also get a head start for the course for next year as you would have done at least something this year. And keep a track when exactly the course starts in 2015. Best of luck(for 2014).

Link to switch from honor code to verified certificate - https://courses.edx.org/course_modes/choose/HarvardX/CS50x/2014_T1/?upgrade=True

The thing to be noticed is that it says UPGRADE, so I don't think that any of your progress will be cleared to zero if you upgrade.

Update : I recently came across this on another course at edx :

Please be reminded that the extended deadline for upgrading to ID-verified track is on 1 Aug 2014 23:59 (GMT+8). You may do this upgrade by simply clicking on Challenge Yourself! Take this course as an ID-verified student below the course title on your dashboard page.

Although this was not for CS50, but for sure there would be one. So keep checking here for this post.

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  • 3 months? Are you certain? It's only August now, and the deadline is December. By my reckoning that's 5 months.
    – Luke Van In
    Commented Jul 31, 2014 at 12:25
  • sorry and thanks to point it out, my brain was somewhere else. I corrected it now. Anything else?
    – sinister
    Commented Jul 31, 2014 at 12:28
  • That was my mistake originally, sorry. I somehow convinced my self that the deadline is October, maybe due to my bad knowledge of English. Thanks for the good answer, I'll try your suggested approach :)
    – Shironecko
    Commented Jul 31, 2014 at 12:36
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It depends upon you. How much time you give to it, how good your background is in CS, how good you are with code. :)

For me it took 3 months. I gave 10-15 hours a week.

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5 months for me, 40+ hours a week, but I started with absolutely 0% knowledge of CS.

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