Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Tell HN: UC Berkeley's CS61A/B/C are the best courses to learn CS and coding

news.ycombinator.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

71–76 of 76 posts

Re: Tell HN: UC Berkeley's CS61A/B/C are the best courses to learn CS and coding

#71

Post by peterleiser »

jdale27 wrote: post #62
gamblor956 wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The CS61 series was excessively difficult compared to the upper-level material, and it was absolutely because it was intended to weed people out of the major. I got A's in all of my upper-level CS courses at Cal. Cryptography and compilers were a breeze compared to the CS61 courses. My average grade in the CS61 series was a B-. The semester I took CS61B (data structures), my grade on the final was 21, out of 100. The…

The semester I took CS61B (data structures), my grade on the final was 21, out of 100. The average grade was 16, and the highest score was 35. Hilfinger?

I took CS61B with Hilfinger in '96. That guy was a character. In one lecture he didn't let a person answer a C++ question because he said "no, you already learned C++ in highschool. I want a virgin". People tried to avoid his classes, but you learn a lot from Hilfinger.

Re: Tell HN: UC Berkeley's CS61A/B/C are the best courses to learn CS and coding

#72

Post by peterleiser »

gnulinux wrote: post #50
realjohng wrote: post #44

Disagree too. These courses were also known as “weeder” courses so less students do the major, which can’t support all the interested students, so they’re overly difficult. Anyone learning, I would start with JavaScript and make small fun stuff.

I personally had a blast and absolutely incredible time in both CS 61A and 61B. That they're "weeder" classes can be considered true only from the perspective that they're challenging classes but note that almost all CS/Math classes in Berkeley are highly challenging and these weren't outliers at all. Before coming to college I had tons of programming experience and two interships. I wrote websites, backends, real li…

This. I went into the CS program cold, no prior programming experience at all. After CS3 and CS61A/B/C my relationship with my brain changed entirely. My approach to deconstructing and then solving problems, of any kind, radically improved.

Re: Tell HN: UC Berkeley's CS61A/B/C are the best courses to learn CS and coding

#73

Post by nextos »

beeburrt wrote: post #30
mdorazio wrote: post #24

Going to hard disagree here and say this is extremely person-specific. I already knew how to code in C++ and Python from high school AP classes. CS61A was awful for me and made me hate computer science. I tested out of 61B. 61C taught me how computers actually work and simultaneously made me quit the major. Here's my take: if you are interested in computer science , the combination of these classes is great. If you a…

> ...there are far better resources out there. Such as? Genuinely interested.

I think HtDP is really good: https://htdp.org

It's beautiful like SICP, without being too difficult or technical.

It teaches one thing well, functional decomposition.

Re: Tell HN: UC Berkeley's CS61A/B/C are the best courses to learn CS and coding

#75

Post by teleforce »

enjoylife wrote: post #47
mdorazio wrote: post #24

Going to hard disagree here and say this is extremely person-specific. I already knew how to code in C++ and Python from high school AP classes. CS61A was awful for me and made me hate computer science. I tested out of 61B. 61C taught me how computers actually work and simultaneously made me quit the major. Here's my take: if you are interested in computer science , the combination of these classes is great. If you a…

> 61C taught me how computers actually work and simultaneously made me quit the major I'm genuinely curious, why did the course make you quit? Was it the material or the professor, or something else entirely?

Not the guy you asked, but my guess is that they're are not interested in how and why the computer works [1].

They probably more interested on how the computers can work for them. These students most likely to work in the banking or finance sectors where the payments are good and bonuses are awesome. Don't got me wrong though, they are good students and engineers, but under-the-hood of computers are not their main interests or passions. For example, someone can become a car enthusiast but can't be bother to open the engine bonnet or pump the tires.

[1]CS 61C. Great Ideas of Computer Architecture (Machine Structures):

https://www2.eecs.berkeley.edu/Courses/CS61C/

Re: Tell HN: UC Berkeley's CS61A/B/C are the best courses to learn CS and coding

#76

Post by aoki »

peterleiser wrote: post #71
jdale27 wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The semester I took CS61B (data structures), my grade on the final was 21, out of 100. The average grade was 16, and the highest score was 35. Hilfinger?

I took CS61B with Hilfinger in '96. That guy was a character. In one lecture he didn't let a person answer a C++ question because he said "no, you already learned C++ in highschool. I want a virgin". People tried to avoid his classes, but you learn a lot from Hilfinger.

I avoided his classes like the plague. His name was already a verb in the 80s.

Which is not to say that I ever held that against him personally. It was kinda cool that you’d be in Evans at 2am and he’d still be randomly wandering the halls.

Post reply on HN