<p>I want to transfer into EECS. I am a sophomore coming from MCB, and if I can do CS 61A next semester, I will have finished 80% of the lower divs for eecs by the beginning of junior year (I will be staying an extra semester). My problem is, I don't have programming experience. You might be wondering why I want to get into EECS w/o any programming experience? I'm more interested in the EE part. Anyway, since I don't have any CS experience, and I have Nov, Dec, and the better part of Jan to prepare for CS 61A, what would be the best way to go about doing that?</p>
<p>Buy the readers from someone and the book and start hacking away at the problem sets and the reading.</p>
<p>take cs 3l/s or read brian harvey’s “simply scheme” or grillmeyers version (dont remeber the name)</p>
<p>watch the webcasts and do the homework in the reader. Read SCIP and learn the material. When I took the class, a lot of people had already worked ahead so I was at a disadvantage.</p>
<p>^But the question is, do you want to be one of those people?</p>
<p>What’s wrong with being one of those A’s and A+'s?</p>
<p>Nothing wrong with getting an A or A+ but the question is if studying ahead is really necessary for that. I know several people who took/take 61A without programming experience and found the class super easy. Then there are people for who the subject is difficult to grasp. Everything it depends on the person.</p>
<p>I recommend you just look at the material for the 1st and 2nd week and if you are having serious problems (let’s say you spend more than 5-6h on HW) go ahead and look at more. But if you think you can keep up there’s really no reason to study ahead. </p>
<p>If you understand the concepts then CS61A is not a time-consuming class (I only spent around 2h on HW per week and always go to lecture but i had prev. experience). If you have so much free time then you could do something else with it. Even if you’re studying now you’ll have to study the material again while you’re taking the class…</p>
<p>i would recommand get some sleep ;p</p>
<p>Er. The time you spend on CS HW is going to be pretty indeterminate. Coding is one of those things where some people take an hour to do what takes another person a whole day to do.</p>
<p>I’m taking it right now. I have had some CS experience before so it’s not hard for me, but I happen to be one of those slow coders.</p>