Welcome to CS 2! We’re super excited to have you here this term!

Most Recent Announcements

Lab tomorrow is asynchronous!
Due to a conflict in room scheduling, lab tomorrow will be entirely asynchronous. All lab sections are cancelled, but we will hold extra office hours in place of the labs that would normally happen from 3pm - 6pm. Anyone can attend as much or as little of the office hours as they want, and you can still work with a partner even if you don't attend any of the office hours in person....(continued here)
Quiz 1 Grades Released on Gradescope!
We have released the quiz01 grades on gradescope. Take a look at your score and feedback, and ask us if you have any questions at cs002@caltech.edu....(continued here)

Due Next

lab04 (anagrams) due @ 11:30 pm on Thu, Feb 06
project03 (html fixer) due @ 11:30 pm on Mon, Feb 10

Office Hours Status

Calendar

Wellness and Inclusion

It is very important to us that you succeed in CS 2. We provide many extra resources to help you. Prof. Blank and the TAs hold many office hours!

It is also very important to us that you maintain your mental wellness throughout the course. A few points are not worth losing sleep over. Everyone on the course staff is available to chat, and you can always attend office hours for a non-academic conversation if necessary. You can also visit the counseling center if you find you need help beyond the course staff. If you have a temporary health condition or permanent disability (either mental health or physical health related), you should contact accessibility services if you have not already. Additionally, if there is something we can do to make your experience better, please let us know.

Diversity, inclusion, and belonging are all core values of this course. All participants in this course must be treated with respect by other members of the community in accordance with the honor code. If you feel unwelcome or unsafe in any way, no matter how minor, we encourage you to talk to Prof. Blank or one of the Deans. We view these sorts of honor code violations as completely unacceptable, and we take them very seriously.

Tools

Project Registration •Extension Requests

Course Staff

Instructors

Prof. Blank

they/them

Book an appointment!

Annenberg 115

blank@caltech.edu

(626) 395-1765

Teaching Assistants

Hopper

she/her

hopper@

Vansh Tibrewal

he/him

vtibrewa@

Aiden Di Carlo

he/him

adicarlo@

Ellie Chen

she/her

echen2@

Jinhuang (Jin) Zhou

he/him

jzhou2@

Maya Keys

she/her

mekeys@

Max Chen

he/him

mfchen@

Pratyush Singh

he/him

pksingh@

Ritali Jain

she/her

rjain@

Robert Reiden Walker

he/they

rrwalker@

Ryan Lin

he/him

rylin@

Sani Deshmukh

she/her

sadeshmu@

Handouts

The following is a list of handouts that you might find helpful throughout the course. We’ve categorized them by when they are useful.

Course

Syllabus – an overview of the course and administrative information

Pair Programming – introduction to pair programming

Collaboration Policy – the course collaboration policy

Week 0

Java/Python Comparison – a comparison of the basic syntax of Python with Java

Software Setup – instructions on how to get Java, IntelliJ, and git for the course

Schedule

L00	Mon, Jan 06	Introduction and OOP [ materials ] Course administrivia. Designing Java classes. Designing data structures. Object oriented programming.
L01	Mon, Jan 13	Problem Decomposition [ materials ] Using an API. Helper methods. Quadgrams. Log likelihoods. Java String API. Reading documentation.
L02	Wed, Jan 15	Java Practice! Practice…writing code in Java.
DUE	Thu, Jan 16 11:30 pm	lab01 (explosive-debugging) [ guide ] Debugging JUnit tests. Prints. The IntelliJ debugger. Breakpoints.
L03	Fri, Jan 17	Basic Data Structure Trade-Offs [ materials ] Lists. Sets. Maps. Nested data structures. Efficiency.
DUE	Mon, Jan 20 11:30 pm	project01 (ciphers) [ guide ] This project helps us transition fully over to Java.
L04	Wed, Jan 22	Stacks and Queues How do we characterize data structures? Client usage of stacks and queues.
DUE	Thu, Jan 23 11:30 pm	lab02 (restaurants) [ guide ] Maps and Lists. Data structure trade-offs.
L05	Fri, Jan 24	Regular Expressions Strings, parsing, and regular expressions.
L06	Mon, Jan 27	The Power of Recursion RECURSION
DUE	Mon, Jan 27 11:30 pm	project02 (hangman) [ guide ] This project focuses on using the built-in Java collections as a client.
DUE	Tue, Jan 28 11:30 pm	quiz01
L07	Wed, Jan 29	Recursive Backtracking The recursive backtracking pattern.
L08	Fri, Jan 31	Implementation: `ArrayIntList` Arrays. Implementing an ArrayList. Designing a class to fit an API.
L09	Mon, Feb 03	Generics and Implementation: `ArrayList` Generics. Java types. Interfaces.
L10	Wed, Feb 05	Iterators and Implementation: `SimpleArraySet`, `SimpleSortedArraySet` Iterators. Implementing a set. Data structure trade-offs.
DUE	Thu, Feb 06 11:30 pm	lab04 (anagrams) [ guide ] Recursive backtracking.
L11	Fri, Feb 07	Stacks and Queues Implementation: `LinkedList` Collections. Stacks. Queues. Nodes. Implementing a linked list.
L12	Mon, Feb 10	More `LinkedList`s More linked list shenanigans
DUE	Mon, Feb 10 11:30 pm	project03 (html fixer) [ guide ] This project focuses on algorithmic efficiency and using stacks and queues.
L13	Wed, Feb 12	Trees and BSTs The tree data structure. Binary search trees.
L14	Fri, Feb 14	Tries The trie data structure.
DUE	Mon, Feb 17 11:30 pm	project04 (synthesizer) This project focuses on building our own data structures for the first time.
L15	Wed, Feb 19	Hash Tables I The hashtable data structure.
DUE	Thu, Feb 20 11:30 pm	lab05 (memoization) Memoization. Recurrence Relations.
L16	Fri, Feb 21	Hash Tables II More hashtables. Collision resolution. Rehashing.
L17	Mon, Feb 24	Asymptotic Analysis I: Big-Theta
DUE	Tue, Feb 25 11:30 pm	quiz02
L18	Wed, Feb 26	Asymptotic Analysis II: Recurrences
L19	Fri, Feb 28	Graphs I: Representation
L20	Mon, Mar 03	Graphs II: DAGs
L21	Wed, Mar 05	Heaps & Priority Queues I The heap data structure.
DUE	Thu, Mar 06 11:30 pm	lab06 (mazes) Solving mazes. DFS.
L22	Fri, Mar 07	Graphs III: Single-Source Shortest Paths
L23	Mon, Mar 10	A Case Study: Union-Find
DUE	Mon, Mar 10 11:30 pm	project06 (markov) This project focuses on implementing the hash table and BST data structures.
L24	Wed, Mar 12	Victory Lap
DUE	Thu, Mar 13 11:30 pm	lab07 (graphs) Traversing graphs. Social networks.
DUE	Wed, Mar 19 11:30 pm	project07 (beavermaps) This project focuses on building and using a graph data structure.
DUE	Mon, Mar 24 11:30 pm	project05 (movies) This project focuses on implementing the trie data structure, and creating an extensible API.