I've taken both, and the code is in fact not that much simpler than it was in the original class. There are, however, two huge differences: the algorithm is spoon-fed to you, and there is no math.
Firstly, think about how much more difficult the assignments would be if, for example, the steps weren't broken out and we didn't get any advice on how to vectorize. Of course, it would still be short work for anyone who (a) knows Matlab/Octave and/or (b) understands the material well, but it would also be an order of magnitude harder.
Secondly - and this is by far the larger point - the original CS 229 was really about math; the programming assignments were more of an afterthought. The lectures and homework mainly focused on the theoretical derivations and corollaries of the math that led to the algorithms. Once you'd done your bit on the math and cried to your classmates and the TA about it, you could go and implement the beautiful and extremely succinct result in Matlab.
As for my perspective on the difference, I believe it is a deliberate choice made with full knowledge of the difficulty drop. For starters, there are (with regards to homework help) no TAs in this course, so the absolute difficulty would have to decline to create an equivalent experience. More significantly, the enrollment has increased by a factor of about 700. If Stanford students had trouble with the original, you can bet that the median student in the course doesn't find it as easy as either of us does. If the goal is to generate the greatest benefit for the most people, and delivering the algorithms with a good intuition on their proper use will do so, then this course has succeeded marvelously. Of course, the smartest and most dedicated students will want more, which remains available through textbooks as well as the original course handouts (http://cs229.stanford.edu/materials.html). However, I would argue that the goal of most MOOCs (massive open online courses) should be to kindle interest and foster basic understanding, both of which the Coursera version achieves.
Firstly, think about how much more difficult the assignments would be if, for example, the steps weren't broken out and we didn't get any advice on how to vectorize. Of course, it would still be short work for anyone who (a) knows Matlab/Octave and/or (b) understands the material well, but it would also be an order of magnitude harder.
Secondly - and this is by far the larger point - the original CS 229 was really about math; the programming assignments were more of an afterthought. The lectures and homework mainly focused on the theoretical derivations and corollaries of the math that led to the algorithms. Once you'd done your bit on the math and cried to your classmates and the TA about it, you could go and implement the beautiful and extremely succinct result in Matlab.
As for my perspective on the difference, I believe it is a deliberate choice made with full knowledge of the difficulty drop. For starters, there are (with regards to homework help) no TAs in this course, so the absolute difficulty would have to decline to create an equivalent experience. More significantly, the enrollment has increased by a factor of about 700. If Stanford students had trouble with the original, you can bet that the median student in the course doesn't find it as easy as either of us does. If the goal is to generate the greatest benefit for the most people, and delivering the algorithms with a good intuition on their proper use will do so, then this course has succeeded marvelously. Of course, the smartest and most dedicated students will want more, which remains available through textbooks as well as the original course handouts (http://cs229.stanford.edu/materials.html). However, I would argue that the goal of most MOOCs (massive open online courses) should be to kindle interest and foster basic understanding, both of which the Coursera version achieves.