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From Carnegie Mellon. Open to everyone.

Programming for People Who Love Ideas

Start with a scientific question worth answering — how DNA forms patterns, how birds flock without a leader, how complex life emerges from simple rules. Read, code, and practice your way to the answer.

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Watch Our Intro Video

Ancient Greek Math and The Foundations of Computer Science

Algorithms are the building blocks of computer science. We'll explore two beautiful mathematical algorithms from ancient Greece, introduce pseudocode, and implement and time these algorithms in code.

Chapter 0

Hunting for Hidden Messages in Bacterial Genomes

Every organism on Earth has a genome made of nucleotides — letters from the four-symbol alphabet {A, C, G, T}. How can we find hidden messages lurking within DNA? Even simple algorithms can reveal deep insights into the life of a bacterium.

Chapter 1

Forecasting a Presidential Election

Monte Carlo simulation uses randomness across many trials to estimate outcomes. We'll apply this technique to simulate the 2016 US presidential election from polling data — and reflect on the pitfalls of forecasting.

Chapter 2

Discovering a Self-Replicating Automaton

Researchers have yet to build a robot that can both perform complex tasks and replicate itself — yet the theoretical foundations are decades old. We'll explore cellular automata and the Game of Life, then build an automaton capable of self-replication.

Chapter 3

Building a Gravity Simulator with Object-Oriented Programming

We'll introduce object-oriented programming and abstraction, then simulate how a small universe of bodies moves under Newtonian gravity by exploring the three-body problem.

Chapter 4

Evolutionary Trees and More Object-Oriented Programming

We'll deepen our understanding of object-oriented programming by implementing UPGMA, one of the most famous algorithms for constructing evolutionary trees.

Chapter 5

Hear From Our Learners

P4❤️ creatively combines the foundations of coding with a scientific twist! It paved the way for my future as a computational biologist.

SarahMaster's Student

Having access to well-written material and hands-on coding videos within the same resource is fantastic, and now everyone with access to the internet has this privilege. “Go” ahead and use it!

BengisuMolecular Biologist

P4❤️ helped me make the leap from spaghetti code to a systematic problem-solving approach for programming.

BenUndergraduate Student

P4❤️ incrementally builds your knowledge, with each chapter using engaging questions that push your abilities, teaching you to solve complex problems systematically.

EthanMaster's Student