See this post on Ed.

To those who celebrate, happy lunar new years fellow 61belugas 🐳 🐋 ! Below are the weekly announcements :3

Discussions

Discussion sections begin this week. All discussion sections can be found on the bottom of the course homepage here. In discussion, TAs will review the material and help students collaborate to solve the problems on the worksheet. You can find more information in the syllabus. There are no signups, and you can attend any discussion section. You are not required to attend a discussion section, although attending a section will count towards your pacing points.

For the first two weeks, we ask that you be respectful of other students in the class, and do not attend multiple discussion sections in the same week. Note that the discussion schedule differs from the schedule in the University Course Catalog.

There is one (1) planned online discussion, scheduled for 5 - 6pm on Tuesday with Max.

We have three (3) different types of discussions this semester. You can find descriptions of each on the week 1 announcements!

Project 0 Released + Debugging Support

Project 0: The Awakening of Azathoth has now been released! It is due Friday, January 27th at 11:59PM. Find more information in the release post here.

Some important notes about debugging support for project 0 via Ed:

TLDR: Come into synchronous OH for debugging support for this project - it’ll be a faster process than asynchronous support.

You may make a private post under the category “Project 0 - Debugging Help”. We want to give you the best advice we can, and in order to do so, we’ll need the context of your issue so we can get up to speed as fast as possible! As a result, please fill out the template entirely and thoroughly - staff may reject private posts which do not provide sufficient context. We believe synchronous OH will be a more productive way of getting help, so staff will only begin to review posts under this category after 6 hours. Please do not make multiple private posts at once - staff will focus on the most recently created private post for each student.

Lab 2: A Debugging Extravaganza

Lab 02: Debugging will be released Monday 1/23 and due Friday 1/27! Please try to complete this assignment before Project 0 as it will teach you how to use the debugger. The debugger will significantly reduce the difficulty of bug squashing for the project.

Homework 0B Released

Homework 0B has been released! It is due Monday, January 23rd at 11:59PM. Find more information in the release post here.

Project 0 Party

We will be holding a Project 0 Party this Wednesday from 3-5pm in the Wozniak Lounge. If you find yourself needing help with the project, feel free to come by! We will start the session by giving a project presentation, and then we will open up to questions/OH-style help. More details about the project party will be posted on Ed soon, so stay tuned!

Post Lab Walkthrough

Occasionally students complete the weekly lab assignment but still feel that there are flaws in their understanding, or that even though their code passes the tests, it is still inefficient and clunky. For this reason 61B will be hosting Post-Lab Review Sections starting this week. These will be weekly one hour sections in Soda 273 on Thursdays (7 - 8pm) where course staff will live code a solution to the previous week’s lab as well as describe their approach so that you can see how a more experienced Java programmer might approach the assignments.

This coming week, the section will review the Git exercise from Lab 01, and expand on how Git works and can be used throughout CS61B. Please come by if you want a deeper look at Git or just want to review the lab content from last week!

These sections will happen in Soda 273.

Tutor Review Session Friday

The first tutor review session is happening this Friday 1-3pm in the Soda labs (2nd floor)!!! Tutor review sessions led by our 61brilliant tutors are meant to catch students up with what has been going on in the course with mini-lectures followed by worksheet & past-exam problems. This week we’re covering Java programming, arrays, and linked lists! Since these sessions have historically had a high turnout, students will be split among the three labs downstairs and will rotate between the rooms. Expect an announcement with more info in the coming days!

Lateness Policy & Pacing Points

We finalized the lateness policy & pacing points earlier last week - please take a moment to review the policies for this semester! If you’re experiencing extenuating circumstances, this new section may also be of use.

Taken from the lateness policy: “An important note on extensions: leading up to an assignment deadline, we usually provide increased support for that assignment (in the form of increased staffing). As a result, continuing to work on an assignment after the original deadline may lead to slower response times on Ed/longer wait times in OH, as staff will actively prioritize assignments whose deadlines have not passed.”

Outstanding Interactions and Incident Reports

If you had a memorable or great experience getting help from any staff member, AI, or another student and want to give them a shoutout, fill out the Outstanding Interactions form! (We’ve been sending these to whomever they mention and it gives all of us energy :D)

On the other hand, if you have had a negative interaction in the course, fill out the anonymous Incident Report Form.

Summary of Important Dates

• Pre-Semester Survey: Due Monday 1/23 at 11:59pm PT

• HW 0B due Monday 1/23

• Lab 1 due Tuesday 1/24

• Project 0 due Friday 1/27

• Project 0 Party Wednesday 1/25 3-5pm in Woz

• Post Lab Walkthrough this Thursday 1/26 at 7-8PM

• Tutor Topical Review Session this Friday 1/27 at 1-3PM

See this post on Ed.

The CS61Beginning of the CS61Blast-Off 🚀🚀🚀

🎉 🎉 🎉 Heyo CS61🅱️esties <3 <3 <3 !!! We are so excited to have you on (61)board for the (61)best semester yet!

Enrollment

If you are currently waitlisted in the class and intend on enrolling, please stay on the waitlist! We will likely be able to expand the course to accommodate all waitlisted students. You should complete assignments as if you’re enrolled in the class to ensure that you don’t fall behind.

Lecture Info

Lectures are scheduled on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday from 1-2 PM in Li Ka Shing 245. The first lecture is this Wednesday (1/18) from 1-2PM, both virtually on zoom (link updated on 1/19 for Friday’s lecture) and in-person. However, the lecture hall does not have sufficient space for all students in the class - the lecture hall can only seat ~290 students. Please fill out this form to let us know how you plan on attending Wednesday’s lecture, so that we can plan accordingly.

Course Website

The course website is now live at https://sp23.datastructur.es/. The website is still under construction! Don’t trust details on pages that say they are under construction, or the assignment calendar past Week 2.

Ed Policies

We’re making these posts on Ed! Ed is a discussion forum similar to Piazza, which you may have used before. On Ed, you can ask questions that your fellow students and course staff can answer. If you haven’t used Ed before, it’s quite nice – we’ve written a guide for new users that introduces you to some of the features.

Since Ed is a resource shared by everyone, we do have some policies that we ask that you follow. Generally, ask the kind of questions that you would like to see on the forum. We have a few specifics on how you can do that in our Ed Policies on the course website.

The main policies that we’d like to highlight here are:

• Categorize your questions appropriately. The information available in Ed is most useful if it’s labeled correctly for others looking through it.

• Please show us that you’ve tried before asking for (conceptual | debugging) help. We care a lot about you learning and finishing the assignments, but also that you learn how to help yourself and ask good questions. The policies have some guidelines on how you can do this.

• Don’t post your code publicly. If you believe you need specific debugging help that involves showing us your code, there will be a category in each assignment labeled “Gitbugs (Private)”. This is where you can ask a private question with your code. Gitbugs have not been released yet.

Discussion

Discussion sections begin next week. In discussion, TAs will review the material and help students collaborate to solve the problems on the worksheet. You can find more information in the syllabus. There are no signups, and you can attend any discussion section. You are not required to attend a discussion section.

For the first two weeks, we ask that you be respectful of other students in the class, and do not attend multiple discussion sections in the same week. The bottom of the homepage of the course website has been updated with the discussion schedule. Note that the discussion schedule differs from the schedule in the University Course Catalog. You won’t see any on the calendar for this week, so look at next week’s calendar if you want to plan ahead.

There is one (1) planned online discussion, scheduled for 4-5pm on Tuesday with Max. This section will not begin on 1/17, but will begin the following week (1/24).

We have three (3) different types of discussions this semester:

Bridge

Do you want more of an emphasis on the concepts before diving into the discussion worksheet? If so, our bridge discussion may be the right place for you! Some of our amazing TAs will lead a two-hour discussion section intentionally organized for students who are not as familiar with the material that week. It’s a great way to get a little more comfortable with the topics and receive more individualized attention during section. The material and difficulty covered during the bridge discussion section will be the same as the Practice discussion section, and we’ll have an extended mini-lecture to reinforce conceptual understanding.

Practice

This section is best for students who are caught up with lecture and are ready to tackle some medium-difficulty questions. Usually there are more questions on the worksheet than can be done in the allotted hour, so TAs can pick and choose which problems to work on during the section.

Exam-Level

Exam-level sections are more fast-paced sections that cover more difficult problems than practice discussions. The goal of these sections is to get comfortable with exam-level problems and problem-solving strategies. In general, there will be less focus on review/mini-lecture and more time spent on the problems. You can attend only an exam-level section, or both a practice/bridge section as well as an exam-level section, since we will cover different problems in the two section types.

Lab

Lab sections begin this week. In lab, TAs will introduce the assignment, review relevant material, and answer students’ questions. You can find more information in the syllabus. There are no signups, and you can attend any lab section. You are not required to attend a lab section. The lab schedule can be found at the bottom of the course website’s main page.

For the first two weeks, we ask that you be respectful of other students in the class, and do not attend multiple lab sections in the same week. You do not have to attend the same TA’s section for lab and discussion. The bottom of the homepage of the course website has been updated with the lab schedule. Note that the lab schedule differs from the schedule in the University Course Catalog.

There is one (1) planned online lab, from 3-5pm on Thursdays taught by Max. This lab will begin on 1/19.

The Lab 1 assignment itself is due Tuesday 1/24 at 11:59 PM PT. This lab contains setup instructions that are required to complete the rest of the course. Start early! Setup can take a long time and sometimes requires TAs to help figure out weird problems. Lab 2, when released, will be due on Friday 1/27 at 11:59 PM PT, so plan accordingly.

See #51 for more details.

HW 0

Homework 0: A Java Crash Course will be released this coming week! The homework consists of two parts:

• Part A - exercises using basic Java syntax and language constructs. This part will be released on Tuesday, January 17th and be due on Friday, January 20th.

• Part B - exercises using the most common data structures that we’ll see in CS 61B. This part will be released on Friday, January 20th and be due on Monday, January 23rd.

Separate Ed threads will be posted about these two assignments once they’re released, so keep an eye out!

Office Hours

Office hours begin this week on Wednesday. During office hours, you can receive individual help on assignments. The office hours schedule can be found at the bottom of the course website’s main page.

Outstanding Interactions and Incident Reports

If you had a memorable or great experience getting help from any staff member, AI, or another student and want to give them a shoutout, fill out the Outstanding Interactions form! (We’ve been sending these to whomever they mention and it gives all of us energy :D)

On the other hand, if you have had a negative interaction in the course, fill out the anonymous Incident Report Form.

Pre-Semester Survey

The Pre-Semester Survey is due Monday 1/23 at 11:59 PM PT. This survey is worth 128 points of extra credit. The first weekly survey will be released this weekend, and due Monday.

Surveys are worth a very small amount of credit in the course. We do not accept late survey responses, and you cannot apply for an extension on surveys.

Summary of Important Dates

• Homework 0A: Released Tuesday 1/17, due Friday 1/20 at 11:59pm PT

• Homework 0🅱️: Released Friday 1/20, due Monday 1/23 at 11:59pm PT

• Project 0: Released Friday 1/20, due Friday 1/27 at 11:59pm PT

• Pre-Semester Survey: Due Monday 1/23 at 11:59pm PT

• Lab 1: Due Tuesday 1/24 at 11:59 PM PT

This website is under construction! Everything subject to change. Exam dates and times, and projects are all TBA.

If you have urgent questions about the course, please email cs61b (at) berkeley.edu. You will get a faster response than emailing Professor Hug.

We know that the links may be broken. If you want to get a head start on the content, you can check out the Fall 2022 course website.

Course policies and other administrative stuff coming soon!

Again, don’t trust what you see below!