<p>I'm going into my fourth year as a MCB major, and I'm hoping to get some exposure to programming with my time remaining here. I'm most likely going to graduate school and hopefully entering the biotech industry afterwards, and I was thinking it may be a good idea to learn programming since I have some room in my schedule (only two more upper div classes left for my major). I hear that having programming background in biotech is a plus, but I just don't know where to start. My question is how can I use my last two semesters here the best. Given the extra time, I want to make sure I use it to something that might potentially help me in the future. Since I feel that I have gotten a solid foundation in biology and chemistry through all the upper div classes that I've taken + research, I was hoping to expand on my foundation and get some programming skills. Does anybody know of any classes that may be useful for people like me? I understand that there is the standard CS3/CS61A, and I'm considering that as well. My main goal is to hopefully be able to learn some more with my remaining time here, since I am still paying for it. </p>
<p>I'm sorry for the long rant, but I just want to know if anyone has ideas or suggestions for what I can do. Thanks.</p>
<p>If you can handle CS 61A and 61B, that would be a good thing.</p>
<p>Will you be able to attend school (either Berkeley or a community college) in the summer? If so, it may be worth taking a gentler introductory course then to prepare for CS 61A.</p>
<p>Thanks ucbalumnus.
I will most likely be interning for a biotech company this summer, so I think summer school is unfortunately not an option. However, I was thinking of self-studying programming so that I’ll be prepared for these classes. Any other inputs? Would you say 61A/B would be enough preparation for my purposes? Or are there any other classes that can be of use.</p>
<p>For self-study, go to the [home</a> page for CS 61A](<a href=“http://inst.eecs.berkeley.edu/~cs61a/sp11/]home”>CS 61A Home Page) and the [MIT</a> Open Courseware for 6.001](<a href=“http://ocw.mit.edu/courses/electrical-engineering-and-computer-science/6-001-structure-and-interpretation-of-computer-programs-spring-2005/]MIT”>Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs | Electrical Engineering and Computer Science | MIT OpenCourseWare) for webcasts and lecture notes.</p>
<p>Both CS 61A textbooks, [Structure</a> and Interpretation of Computer Programs](<a href=“http://www-mitpress.mit.edu/sicp/full-text/book/book.html][i]Structure”>http://www-mitpress.mit.edu/sicp/full-text/book/book.html) and [Simply</a> Scheme](<a href=“http://cs.berkeley.edu/~bh/ss-toc2.html][i]Simply”>Simply Scheme: Introducing Computer Science), are free on the web. You can also download the [MIT</a> Scheme](<a href=“http://www.gnu.org/software/mit-scheme/]MIT”>MIT/GNU Scheme - GNU Project - Free Software Foundation) interpreter so that you can install on your own computer to do the exercises.</p>
<p>CS 61A and 61B is probably the best you can get for general software / programming skills within the limitation of two semesters (though possibly also some additional courses in the CS 9 series may help a bit).</p>