Lectures:
Mon, Wed 2:00pm - 3:30pm @ Soda 306
Discussions:
Tyler - Discussion [101]: Wed 1-2 PM @ Soda 320
Albert - Discussion [102]: Mon 4-5 @ Soda 306
Henric - Discussion [104]: Wed 10-11am @ Wheeler 202
(10/21 Update) Note that other discussion sections have been converted to OH.
Instructor: Koushik Sen (ksen at cs dot berkeley dot edu)
GSIs:
Rahul Shah (rsha256 at berkeley dot edu)
Tyler Hou (tylerhou at berkeley dot edu)
Jiwon Park (jiwon.park at berkeley dot edu)
Eric Liu (erikiceliu at berkeley dot edu)
Henric Zhang (henriczhang at berkeley dot edu)
Albert Ye (aye at berkeley dot edu)
Please make a private Ed post before emailing! Also, attach please attach the prefix [cs164] to the subject of any emails.
The class home page for this semester is here! Please make sure to bookmark it! Course handouts, answers to frequently asked questions, lecture notes, and updates on assignments will be posted on the home page.
The homepage of this site will also provide an overview of the week in progress, with the following:
Topic being covered + Lecture slides
Homeworks and Discussions
For discussions, questions, and as the class forum we will be using Ed Discussion.
For written assignment submissions we will be using Gradescope.
For programming assignment submission we will be using Github Classroom. Note: More information on this will be provided when assignments are released.
Another book you might find useful is "Unix in a Nutshell (System V Edition)" by Gilly, published by O'Reilly & Associates. As its name suggests, the book is a short guide to working on a Unix system, including descriptions of common Unix commands and utilities.
Most weeks will involve a written assignment covering material presented in lecture and the readings. These written assignments are to be completed individually. Their purpose is to give you practice with the theoretical material of the course. Spending time on the written assignments pays off on the exams!
Written assignments are due on the date and time specified in the assignment PDFs/Gradescope. Please include your name and email address on your assignment. Assignments must be submitted via https://gradescope.com/. Please do not bring assignments to staff offices.
The course project consists of three programming assignments. Taken together, the three form a complete implementation of a variant of Python.
Start the programming assignments early! Completing the course project is a large, complex, and rewarding task, which is made much easier by giving adequate forethought to design. The course schedule allows ample time to complete the assignments, so take advantage of it. Programs will be evaluated for correctness, organization, and documentation.
Documentation and structuring should be incorporated into programs from the beginning. Neither the instructors, teaching assistants, nor readers will help with incomprehensible programs.
Programming assignments should be done in teams of two. Teamwork imposes burdens of communication and coordination, but has the benefits of more thoughtful designs and cleaner programs. Team programming is also the norm in the professional world.
Students on a team are expected to participate equally in the effort and to be thoroughly familiar with all aspects of the joint work. Both members bear full responsibility for the completion of assignments. Partners turn in one solution for each programming assignment; each member receives the same grade for the assignment. If a partnership is not going well, the teaching assistants will help negotiate new partnerships. Teams may not be dissolved in the middle of an assignment.
Programming assignments are due at 11:59 PM on the date in the course schedule. Programming assignments will be turned in electronically via Github Classroom. Links to assignments will be posted!
Each student gets an automatic extension of 100 hours. You can use the extension on any programming assignment(s) during the semester (in increments that are rounded up to the nearest integer). For instance, you can hand in one assignment 100 hours late, or each of three assignments 33 hours late. For group project assignments, the slip time will be deducted from each team member's remaining slip time. When you hand in a late assignment, you must identify in the README file the following: (i) how late this assignment is, and (ii) how much of the total slip time you have left. No assignment will be accepted more then 100 hours late. After you have used up your slip time, any assignment handed in late will be marked off 1% per hour. This policy does not apply to the written assignments. Late written assignments will receive no credit.
There will be one midterm exam and one final.
The midterm is scheduled for Thursday, October 17th, 7pm-9pm. Rooms will be announced.
The final exam is scheduled for Tuesday, December 19th, 3pm-6pm. Rooms will be announced.
There will be no early or make-up exams. Please plan accordingly!
If you are unable to attend the midterm due to extenuating circumstances, you may clobber the midterm with the final. You may not clobber the final with the midterm. To apply for a midterm clobber, fill out this form.
Regrade requests will only be accepted for programming assignments and exams. In either case, all regrade requests must be received within one week upon receiving your score. For exams, we will only consider regrades if we made a mistake in the grading of your exam. Note that we reserve the right to regrade the entire exam. For programming assignments, we will only consider regrades if we made a mistake in the grading of your project or if there was a small bug in your project that caused you to lose at least 10 points. A small bug is one that can be fixed by changing very few lines of code without affecting the design or the algorithm in a significant way. All such requests must be made to your TA (not to the readers). If we accept the regrade request we will re-run the autograder and will give you 50% of the score difference.
Discussion section attendance is optional, but highly encouraged. These sections provide review and practice problems on course content. Discussion worksheets will be released on the website. This is the current discussion schedule:
Tyler - Discussion [101]: Wed 1-2 PM @ Soda 320
Albert - Discussion [102]: Mon 4-5 @ Soda 306
Henric - Discussion [104]: Wed 10-11am @ Wheeler 202
It is impossible to pass the course without doing the programming assignments. The relative weight of the components of your grade will be approximately:
EdStem discussion 2%
Written assignments 5%
Course projects (PA1-PA4) 45%
Midterm 20%
Final 28%
It is expected that all students understand University policies on academic honesty. Cheating on assignments or exams is very serious and will not be tolerated. In this course, we will use a variation of the standard policy. In this class, it is permissible to talk to other students about assignments, to discuss particular solutions, and even to receive partial solutions (including code) from others. However, all assistance and cooperation must be cited in the assignment write-up. If you receive any assistance from anyone other than course staff or your partner on an assignment, you must acknowledge in the write-up for that assignment who gave assistance and what assistance was given. Grading will take into account how much help a student received from others (the more help, the lower the grade). Failure to acknowledge sources is plagiarism and will be treated as a serious breach of academic honesty. No assistance may be given or received on exams.
You should know that fairly sophisticated plagiarism detection software will be used on the programming assignments.
Students are not allowed to deliberately search the web or query an AI/LLM for direct solutions.
Deliberately using existing solutions, even with citation, is an academic integrity violation. The consequences of an academic integrity violation could include receiving an F in the course among other academic disciplinary actions.
Queries that are not specific to the project are allowed. For example, it is OK to search for “how does precedence work in CUP” and “precedence example CUP”, but it is not OK to search for “CUP precedence rules for ChocoPy”.
Students are not allowed to use AI-assisted automatic code completion. This includes, but is not limited to, GitHub Copilot or Copilot-style autocompletion, and editors with AI integration like Cursor. Note that AI-based autocomplete may produce direct solutions, which also violates the above policy.
If we suspect you of using AI to generate project code, we will treat it like any other possible academic integrity violation. Again, the consequences of an academic integrity violation could include receiving an F in the course among other academic disciplinary actions.
Traditional, basic code completion that simply looks up symbols in the current scope is explicitly allowed.