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

Most Recent Announcements

Lecture Tomorrow Cancelled and Project Due Date Extended -- details inside!
As you may be aware, Caltech has cancelled classes tomorrow due to the current conditions. As we'd prefer you be safe and not worry about the project (especially given the ski trips this weekend), we are extending the project due date a full week. That is, it will be due Monday, January 20th @ 11:30pm. This will give us some wiggle room to make sure that lectures necessary for the homework happen with enough time to use them and protect against more lectures potentially having to be cancelled....(continued here)
Course Registration + Ombuds Form
If you're interested in being an ombuds for the course this term, fill out the following form: https://forms.gle/1HgQK43DFH2gFAwJ6 ...(continued here)

Due Next

lab01 (explosive-debugging) due @ 11:30 pm on Thu, Jan 16
project01 (ciphers) due @ 11:30 pm on Mon, Jan 20

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

any/all

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	Fri, Jan 10	Java Practice! Practice…writing code in Java.
L02	Mon, Jan 13	Problem Decomposition Using an API. Helper methods. Quadgrams. Log likelihoods. Java String API. Reading documentation.
L03	Wed, Jan 15	Basic Data Structure Trade-Offs Lists. Sets. Maps. Nested data structures. Efficiency.
DUE	Thu, Jan 16 11:30 pm	lab01 (explosive-debugging) [ guide ] Debugging JUnit tests. Prints. The IntelliJ debugger. Breakpoints.
L04	Fri, Jan 17	Regular Expressions Strings, parsing, and regular expressions.
DUE	Mon, Jan 20 11:30 pm	project01 (ciphers) [ guide ] This project helps us transition fully over to Java.
L05	Wed, Jan 22	ADTs, Stacks, and Queues How do we characterize data structures? Client usage of stacks and queues.
DUE	Thu, Jan 23 11:30 pm	lab02 (memory) Memory model. References. Linked Lists. Recursion.
L06	Fri, Jan 24	Implementation: `ArrayIntList` Arrays. Implementing an ArrayList. Designing a class to fit an API.
L07	Mon, Jan 27	Generics and Implementation: `ArrayList` Generics. Java types. Interfaces.
DUE	Mon, Jan 27 11:30 pm	project02 (hangman) This project focuses on using the built-in Java collections as a client.
DUE	Tue, Jan 28 11:30 pm	quiz01
L08	Wed, Jan 29	Iterators and Implementation: `SimpleArraySet`, `SimpleSortedArraySet` Iterators. Implementing a set. Data structure trade-offs.
L09	Fri, Jan 31	Stacks and Queues Implementation: `LinkedList` Collections. Stacks. Queues. Nodes. Implementing a linked list.
L10	Mon, Feb 03	The Power of Recursion RECURSION
DUE	Mon, Feb 03 11:30 pm	project03 (html fixer) This project focuses on algorithmic efficiency and using stacks and queues.
L11	Wed, Feb 05	More Recursion
DUE	Thu, Feb 06 11:30 pm	lab03 (tradeoffs) Data structure trade-offs. Efficiency.
L12	Fri, Feb 07	Trees and BSTs The tree data structure. Binary search trees.
L13	Mon, Feb 10	Tries The trie data structure.
DUE	Mon, Feb 10 11:30 pm	project04 (synthesizer) This project focuses on building our own data structures for the first time.
L14	Wed, Feb 12	Recursive Backtracking More tries. The recursive backtracking pattern.
DUE	Thu, Feb 13 11:30 pm	lab04 (huffman) Recursive backtracking. Trees.
L15	Fri, Feb 14	Hash Tables I The hashtable data structure.
DUE	Mon, Feb 17 11:30 pm	project05 (movies) This project focuses on implementing the trie data structure, and creating an extensible API.
L16	Wed, Feb 19	Hash Tables II More hashtables. Collision resolution. Rehashing.
DUE	Thu, Feb 20 11:30 pm	lab05 (memoization) Memoization. Recurrence Relations.
L17	Fri, Feb 21	Asymptotic Analysis I: Big-Theta
L18	Mon, Feb 24	Asymptotic Analysis II: Recurrences
DUE	Tue, Feb 25 11:30 pm	quiz02
L19	Wed, Feb 26	Graphs I: Representation
L20	Fri, Feb 28	Graphs II: DAGs
L21	Mon, Mar 03	Heaps & Priority Queues I The heap data structure.
DUE	Mon, Mar 03 11:30 pm	project06 (beavermaps) This project focuses on building and using a graph data structure.
L22	Wed, Mar 05	Graphs III: Single-Source Shortest Paths
DUE	Thu, Mar 06 11:30 pm	lab06 (mazes) Solving mazes. DFS.
L23	Fri, Mar 07	Sorting
L24	Mon, Mar 10	A Case Study: Union-Find
L25	Wed, Mar 12	What's Next?
DUE	Thu, Mar 13 11:30 pm	lab07 (graphs) Traversing graphs. Social networks.