CS 188 prereqs / CS 61A or E7?

Colleges and Universities A-Z University of California - Berkeley
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<p>I'm an intended cogsci major and one of our required classes is CS 188 (AI). Its prereqs are listed as: 61A or 61B and consent of instructor; 70 or Mathematics 55. For anyone who's taken the class, is 61A something I could get around, or it is necessary to the class?</p>

<p>Also, prereqs for the cogsci major: they announced this semester that we can take E7 instead of 61A (this is tempting because I haven't done any programming). Which one do you think I should take? Is 61A something I could jump into?</p>

<p>These questions sort of go together, since one of our required classes has a prereq which they are now saying can be replaced by an easier class.</p>

<p>Thanks!</p>

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<p>If you’re never programmed before, CS 61A will be ridiculously hard for you, but at the same time, 61A will teach you a lot more than E7 and better prepare you for CS 188.
You’ve got a catch 22 situation here.</p>

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<p>What 20LEGEND says is true.</p>

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<p>alright, I think I’ll stay enrolled in 61A. Even though it might own me, I’d say it looks like a good long-term decision.</p>

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<p>cs188 uses python, which is an easy language to pick up. and the programming in the class is light compared to other upper div cs courses. </p>

<p>if you know what a for loop is and are familiar with OOP, you should be fine</p>

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<p>Funny thing is, in MIT, the CS61A equivalent course is taught in Python. So doing CS61A would be the best option.</p>

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<p>Yeah, 61A is better in the long term. Just be sure you have a few CS / EECS friends to rely on during hard times. I had a few non-EECS friends who took 61A instead of E7, and they ended up fine, even though they had a really hard time with it.</p>

<p>As for programming languages - don’t worry too much. The point is to learn programming, and because of the logical nature of programming languages, you should be able to pick up any language within 72hr once you’ve truly understood the subject. That’s actually what’s so nice about scheme – the simple syntax separates makes the class more about the art of programming instead of learning Scheme (that’s CS3L, IIRC).</p>