CS61A Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs
wla.berkeley.edu
wla.berkeley.edu
The current iteration is at http://cs61a.org - taught by two undergrads for the summer.
The most recent two iterations taught by professors are http://fa16.cs61a.org and http://sp17.cs61a.org
Uh when did you take it? When I took the self-paced version with Harvey we read SICP. I mean, I'm sure some students skipped readings but they were still assigned nevertheless.
I took 61A with Hilfinger (who usually taught 61B) and I didn't crack the book. His lectures and notes were very thorough. I can't remember if there were readings on the syllabus that I skipped but I didn't crack the book. Moreover, I was always big on doing the reading before class. Class was a review.
Later when I did read SICP, I didn't like it. Maybe that was like reading the book after seeing the movie. Dunno, but I didn't like it.
As an aside, there was a whole subculture of students who read nothing but just did the HW and worked past tests and sets. They did amazingly well. I had a study buddy who did that in EE20. I prepped him for the final and he told me he'd beat me; he narrowly did. He graduated with a 3.9+ GPA in EECS which is insane. He hated ideas then and now. But he tested insanely well. It was just pattern matching.
Which introductory CS books did you enjoy? I still love my copy of Patterson and Hennessy but it is dry compared to SICP. To someone who had only ever programmed in C++ before 61A, SICP felt like an adventure.
> As an aside, there was a whole subculture of students who read nothing but just did the HW and worked past tests and sets. They did amazingly well.
Yep. Sadly this has only become more common with the rapid growth of the major. Most of my friends were brilliant but they didn't love EECS. If they had been 10 years older they probably would have majored in math or physics but they felt pressured to study something that would get them a job. They were able to do well just by studying old tests.
We would only get old tests from HKN but many students were somehow able to illegally obtain them. Cheating has only become more rampant and more sophisticated -- the department is going to have to address it at some point instead of sticking their head in the sand.
If Kubi is teaching just take the course.
one thing that struck me about SICP, is in the first section of the first paragraph they use an example of square roots by newtons approximation method. WTF!?!?
With all today's talk about being more welcoming to talented people with different backgrounds, talk about an off putting first example!!
They're at composingprograms.com - written by Denero to use Python, but based very heavily off of SICP.