Announcements

• Welcome!
• Lab 00 tomorrow (June 22nd)
• Discussion 01 on Thursday (June 23rd)
• No homework assignments this week

About me

• Rising Sophomore (Intended CS + Music Major)
• 1st Semester on course staff (although I've taught this class with a student organization (CSM) before)
• From Hong Kong!
• I solve Rubik's cubes competitively
  • That's where my pseudonym comes from
• I love cats
• I think Twemoji (the emoji set that applications such as Discord uses) is awesome

Ice-Breaker!

• Turn to people around you! (in around groups of four)
  • Introduce yourselves - share your name, major, pronouns (if comfortable), year, and something interesting
• After 5-7 minutes, we'll share this with the whole class!
• This is a great opportunity to get to know people in this section!

Discussions

• Discussion sections will have more conceptual review
• We generally won't finish all questions on the worksheet
• If you have a question at any point in time during the discussion, please ask!
  • Please be respectful of each other
• Attendance will be done during discussion, and you need to go to 8 out of 12 discussions to get full credit for discussion.
• Worksheets can be found on cs61a.org.
• If for some reason you can't make my discussion, email another TA, or join a remote discussion.

Labs

• Labs are somewhat similar to discussions, except you code
• I'll start with a mini-lecture
• Labs are collaborative!
• Whenever you have a question, feel free to talk to your peers, or raise your hand up, and I, or one of the lab assistants, will come over
• Attendance for labs, similarly to discussions, is also required. (You need to go to 8 out of 12 possible labs to get full credit)

Office Hours

• Office Hours
  • My office hours have yet to be determined, but they'll be updated on my website once I know when they'll be.
  • This slide deck will also be updated
• There are 3 different types of office hours that you can go to in general
  • Advising office hours - not directly related to content
  • In-person office hours - go to a physical room (can work collaboratively!) and join a queue to get help from course staff
  • Online office hours - 20-minute session with course staff for debugging or conceptual questions.

Course Assignments

There are 3 different types of assignments:

• Lab
  • Due date is very close to the day of our synchronous lab.
• Homework
  • Generally due in on Thursday
• Projects
  • 4 different projects
  • Generally larger programming projects
  • You can work with someone else on them

Lost on the Moon

Your spaceship has just crashed on the moon. You were scheduled to rendezvous with a mother ship 200 miles away on the lighted surface of the moon, but the rough landing has ruined your ship and destroyed all the equipment on board except for the 15 items listed below. Your crew’s survival depends on reaching the mother ship, so you must choose the most critical items available for the 200-mile trip. Your task is to rank the 15 items in terms of their importance for survival. Place a number 1 by the most important item, number 2 by the second most important, and so on, through number 15, the least important.

• Work 5 minutes by yourself
• Work 10 minutes in groups of 4 (in the group from earlier)

Course Website

• The course website is super useful!

61A General Information

• This class is not designed for people without prior coding experience
  • Something like AP CS A is enough to get started with 61A
  • If you don't have prior experience, consider taking something like CS 10 or Data 8 instead (CS 10 is recommended)
    • It's still possible to do well in this class without prior experience
    • Prior data has shown that only around 10% of people without prior experience can get a B+ or above

61A Resources

• This class is most definitely difficult, but it also has the most resources out of any CS lower division class here (everything can be found on cs61a.org)
  • Office Hours
  • Tutor Sections
  • Video Walkthroughs/Past Exams
• Please don't stress
  • 61A has the infrastructure to help students, so please reach out to anyone on course staff if you're looking for advice or just want general help
  • Everyone struggles in this class
  • There are Lab + HW drops as well as opportunity for extra credit!

61A Resources

• I'm also a resource!
  • I took this class in Fall 2021 (very recently!), so I still remember what it was like to struggle through this class, and have seen other people go through those same things.
  • Please feel free to email me whenever you have anything to ask - I'll respond within 24 hours (if you don't see a message then, please bump the email thread). I'm always available to talk (not just related to CS61A!), give advice, and help out in any possible way I can

• Your classmates can help too!

61A Resources

• cs61a.org/contact
  • Contains different ways to contact course staff - some of them might be more useful to you in certain situations - please take a look at them
• Extension Request Form (go.cs61a.org/extensions)
  • If you want to request an extension, please do it here!
  • 24-hour extensions (past an assignment deadline) are automatically approved!

Mental Health Resources

• CAPS:
  • If you need to talk to a professional, please call CAPS at 510-642-9494.
• After Hours Assistance
  • For any assistance after hours, details on what to do can be found at this link
• Me!
  • While I'm not a professional in the slightest, I'm more than happy to talk to you about anything.