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Welcome to CS 17

CS 17/18 is one of two year-long introductory sequences in computer science. On this page you'll find important information related to the fall course, CS 17.

Why CS 17?

In the history of invention there are major milestones like fire, metallurgy, cloth, and calculus. Where does computation fit in? Right up there with the best of them: computers and computation extend into every niche of everyday life and every branch of scholarship. Understanding the key ideas of computation is essential for the informed adult.

CS 17/18 provides an introduction to computation -- how we express computation, writing programs to make computers carry out computation, understanding the difficulty of a particular computation, and knowing some of the limits of computation. Over the course of the year, students learn three languages (Scheme, ML, and Java), each of which introduces a new way of thinking about programming. As we study these languages, we also learn important ideas about computation -- recursion, abstraction, algorithm analysis -- and important current methods, like object-oriented programming.

The course stresses ideas over current technology, aiming to provide understanding that will still be useful to the student decades from now. It's well-suited to those who feel a desire to become familiar with computing, even if they are not planning to concentrate in computer science.