Prerequisites

THIS IS A HARD BOOK. Although the course allows for no former programming experience, approaching the course this way will make it needlessly difficult. Berkeley, in their version of the course recommends:

• Maths up to Single Variable Calculus: limits, functions, integration, differentiation.
  • Optionally, Discrete Maths and proofs will be extremely helpful for the course’s harder exercises.

• Some programming experience: some confidence in using recursion is cited as a benchmark. If you’re in between comfort levels, we strongly recommend the twin courses How to Code: Simple Data and Complex Data as a precursor.

How to Code: Simple Data

There is one session available: This programming course takes a unique approach, as it focuses on learning a systematic programming method rather than a programming language. This practical approach will help you channel your creativity so that you can program well in any language.

https://www.edx.org/course/how-to-code-simple-data

Course Introduction

What to expect (read before starting)

The course is split into 16 weeks. Materials given are in order (ie reading should precede homework should precede … etc.) Each week will have readings, homework, a lab section, and 2-3 lectures. Some intervals will have projects and midterm exams associated with them.

Readings

These are usually taken from the SICP textbook. This resource will link to the corrected 2nd edition, available free online. The textbook contains exercises, see Homework below for details. Occasionally a non-SICP handout is given - these will be linked.

Homework

From the lecturers:

Homework assignments consist mostly of exercises from the textbook; you’ll do these whenever you can schedule time, either in the lab or at home. You may be accustomed to textbooks with huge numbers of boring, repetitive exercises. You won’t find that in our text! Each assigned exercise teaches an important point.

Because of the textbook’s popularity, answers for every SICP exercise can be easily found online through Google.

Lab sections

These are quick projects, usually intended to be completed in groups. A good opportunity for collaboration if you are going through these texts alongside somebody else!

Lectures

Each week has 2 or 3 lectures associated with it. Given are lecture notes, the appropriate ones will be linked on the week’s page. Keep in mind this quote from the course creators:

The course reader includes my lecture notes. What this means is that you should be able to devote your effort during lecture to thinking, rather than to frantic scribbling.

Programs from the lectures can be accessed in the cs61a/lib folder of the course materials (see below)

Projects

These are larger projects for you to apply more of your skills, given every few weeks or so. Often these projects are intended for pairs.

Exams

There are three midterm exams and a final. For each, three sample papers (with answers) are given for each.

For completionists…

Not every chapter in SICP is covered in these lecture series (the last of the 5 segments is entirely dropped, for one). A full list of chapters skipped is given here:

Every exercise is also, not necessarily assigned. But solutions for every one can be easily found online if you want to go ahead with them.

Get started

Download the materials

• To get started, clone the course materials from the github repository linked here.

• We use the online SICP given here, as created by sarabander

Course calendar

Credits

Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs

Lecture materials made generously available online by Brain Harvey and the University of California, Berkeley.

This resource compiles those already freely available and claims no ownership.