Intensive Introduction to Computer Science

This course teaches students how to solve problems, both with and without code, with an emphasis on correctness, design, and style. Topics include computational thinking, abstraction, algorithms, data structures, and computer science more generally. Problem sets are inspired by the arts, humanities, social sciences, and sciences. More than teach students how to program in one language, this course teaches how to program fundamentally and ultimately how to teach oneself new programming languages. The course starts with a traditional but omnipresent language called C that underlies today's newer languages, through which students learn not only about functions, variables, conditionals, and loops, but also how computers themselves work underneath the hood, memory and all. The course then transitions to Python, a higher-level language that students understand all the more because of C. Toward term's end, the course introduces SQL, via which students can store data in databases, along with HTML, CSS, and JavaScript, via which students can create web and mobile applications. The course culminates in a final project. Students can count two of the following three courses—CSCI E-10a, CSCI E-10b, and CSCI E-50—toward a degree. They may not count all three toward a degree.