CS 2 (Winter 2026)

Tools Staff Handouts Schedule

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

Most Recent Announcements

Due Next

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

Instructor

Prof. Blank
they/them
Book an appointment!
Annenberg 115
blank@caltech.edu
(626) 395-1765

Instructor

Prof. Justin Yokota
he/him
Annenberg 115
jyokota@caltech.edu

Teaching Assistants

Hopper
she/her
hopper@
Vansh Tibrewal
he/him
vtibrewa@
Aiden Di Carlo
he/him
adicarlo@
Ellie Chen
she/her
echen2@
Aaron Zhou
he/him
azhou7@
Aditya Pakal
he/him
apakal@
Aditya Pillai
he/him
ampillai@
Amudhan Gurumoorthy
he/him
agurumoo@
Arjun Sharma
he/him
asharma3@
Carolyn Ruan
she/her
cruan@
Jinhuang (Jin) Zhou
he/him
jzhou2@
Katia Avanesov
she/her
kavaneso@
Maya Yie
she/her
myie@
Reiden Walker
he/they
rrwalker@
Tobjorn (Toby) Nelson
they/them
tlnelson@

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

Policies – an overview of the late policy and DUETs

Pair Programming – introduction to pair programming

Collaboration Policy – the course collaboration policy

DUETs – guide to understanding DUETs for labs and projects

Grading – guide to understanding project grading

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 05 Introduction and OOP
Course administrivia. Designing Java classes. Designing data structures. Object oriented programming.
L01 Wed, Jan 07 Problem Decomposition
Using an API. Helper methods. Quadgrams. Log likelihoods. Java String API. Reading documentation.
L02 Fri, Jan 09 Basic Data Structure Trade-Offs
Lists. Sets. Maps. Nested data structures. Efficiency.
DUE Fri, Jan 09
11:30 pm		 project01 (ciphers) [ guide ]
This project helps us transition fully over to Java.
L03 Mon, Jan 12 More Data Structure Trade-Offs
More Lists. Sets. Maps. Nested data structures. Efficiency.
DUE Tue, Jan 13
11:30 pm		 lab01 (explosive-debugging) [ guide ]
Debugging JUnit tests. Prints. The IntelliJ debugger. Breakpoints.
L04 Wed, Jan 14 Stacks and Queues
How do we characterize data structures? Client usage of stacks and queues.
L05 Fri, Jan 16 Regular Expressions
Strings, parsing, and regular expressions.
DUE Fri, Jan 16
11:30 pm		 project02 (hangman) [ guide ]
This project focuses on using the built-in Java collections as a client.
:( Mon, Jan 19 No Class (Martin Luther King Day)
DUE Tue, Jan 20
11:30 pm		 lab02 (restaurants) [ guide ]
Maps and Lists. Data structure trade-offs.
L06 Wed, Jan 21 The Power of Recursion
RECURSION
L07 Fri, Jan 23 Recursive Backtracking I
The recursive backtracking pattern.
DUE Fri, Jan 23
11:30 pm		 project03 (html fixer) [ guide ]
This project focuses on algorithmic efficiency and using stacks and queues.
L08 Mon, Jan 26 Recursive Backtracking II
The recursive backtracking pattern.
L09 Wed, Jan 28 Asymptotic Analysis I: Big-Theta
L10 Fri, Jan 30 Asymptotic Analysis II: Recurrences
L11 Mon, Feb 02 Memoization I
L12 Wed, Feb 04 Memoization II
L13 Fri, Feb 06 Quiz
DUE Fri, Feb 06
03:00 pm		 Quiz
L14 Mon, Feb 09 Graphs I: Representation
L15 Wed, Feb 11 Graphs II: DAGs
L16 Fri, Feb 13 Graphs III: Single-Source Shortest Paths
DUE Fri, Feb 13
11:30 pm		 project04 (json and webcrawler) [ guide ]
This project focuses on implementing recursion.
:( Mon, Feb 16 No Class (President’s Day)
L17 Wed, Feb 18 Graphs IV
L18 Fri, Feb 20 Graphs V
DUE Fri, Feb 20
11:30 pm		 project05 (beaversearch) [ guide ]
This project focuses on implementing the backend of a search engine.
L19 Mon, Feb 23 Implementation: ArrayIntList I
Arrays. Implementing an ArrayList. Designing a class to fit an API.
L20 Wed, Feb 25 Midterm
DUE Wed, Feb 25
03:00 pm		 Midterm
DUE Wed, Feb 25
11:30 pm		 lab05 (review recursive backtracking) [ guide ]
Three recursive backtracking problems for extra practice.
L21 Fri, Feb 27 Implementation: ArrayIntList II
Arrays. Implementing an ArrayList. Designing a class to fit an API.
L22 Mon, Mar 02 LinkedLists I
L23 Wed, Mar 04 LinkedLists II
L24 Fri, Mar 06 Hash Tables and BitSets
DUE Sat, Mar 07
11:30 pm		 project06 (beavermaps) [ guide ]
This project focuses on building and using a graph data structure.
L25 Mon, Mar 09 Victory Lap
L26 Wed, Mar 11 Final
DUE Wed, Mar 11
03:00 pm		 Final