<p>How hard are these courses - CS 61B, 170, 172, 174?</p>
<p>I'm IEOR but I want to take these classes. I've never taken CS 61A, but I got an A in E77 (.3 points away from an A+) and I have experience in Java. Hilfinger is supposedly the harder professor and he's the one teaching next semester. Also, are labs and discussions mandatory? Is lecture mandatory? because I plan on scheduling another class at the same time.</p>
<p>Do I need 170 before 172 and 174 or can I take them at the same time? And how much work are all these classes? Any input is appreciated.</p>
<p>I too took E77 instead of CS 61A before going into CS 61B. Coming from a guy who never knew what programming was before E77, you should be fine in 61B. The only thing that sucked was that they would always explain Java topics in terms of Scheme (61A), but the topics are very manageable regardless, and even more so if you have coded in Java before. I was in an experimental version of the class with Clancy (6 hours of lab and 1 hour of lecture a week). The projects were a little time consuming close to deadlines if you procrastinated, but nothing horrible for the most part.</p>
<p>CS170 is a pretty cool class. It was an easy transition from CS70 (which I hear is very similar to Math 55). The topics are very interesting and not too hard to grasp for the most part. Its basically 2 midterms and a final, in addition to weekly homeworks. With Demmel as a professor, the homeworks were about 3-5 hours each on average. They are mostly the types of homework where figuring out a problem may take an hour, but writing the solution takes about 2 minutes (of course, there were rare occurrences of the opposite, such as Fourier Transforms). </p>
<p>I haven't taken 172 or 174 yet, though I plan on it. I had a friend in 170 that took 174 the semester before, and he said that it was fine.</p>