Building Programming Experience: A Lead-In to 6.001
Course facts
- Payment: Free, no certificate
- Credits: Non Credit
- Learning style: Self-paced, start anytime
- Resources: Exam Solutions; Exams; Lecture Notes; Programming Assignments with Examples
MIT OpenCourseWare details
- As taught in: January IAP 2005
- Department: Electrical Engineering and Computer Science
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A two-week beginner’s introduction to programming in Scheme, with lecture notes, eight homeworks with solutions and a practice quiz.
Students with little or no programming experience get what this two-week January class calls an aggressively gentle introduction, aimed at those who feel they would struggle in 6.001. Daily lecture and lab teach Scheme, procedures, recursion, lists and higher order procedures. Plenty of practice problems let you learn to reduce a problem into easier sub-problems and reason about what code does.
What You Will Achieve
- Phrase a problem in computational terms
- Reduce a problem into a set of easier sub-problems
- Implement a design plan in Scheme
- Reason about program code to work out its function
Program Overview
Basic Scheme and Procedures
The opening lectures introduce the language and how procedures work.
- Introduction and basic Scheme
- Procedures and recursion
- Recursive and iterative processes
Lists and Abstraction
The middle lectures move on to data.
- Basic lists and list procedures
- Data abstraction
- Higher order procedures and types
Larger Programs
The last lectures combine these into richer exercises.
- Tags and association lists
- Trees
- Henderson picture language
Course Completion
Job Outlook
This is a first step toward further programming and computer science study, particularly courses that use Scheme.
Good for: Beginners planning to take a Scheme-based course such as Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs who want practice first.
Keep in mind: It teaches Scheme specifically, and the lab assistants who supported students are not part of the site. Homework and a quiz come with solutions.
Bottom line: A practice-heavy primer for beginners, with solved homework and a quiz modeled on 6.001.
Frequently Asked Questions
Which programming language does it use?
Scheme. Each day mixes lecture and lab to introduce the language and the mechanics of how to write code, with homework assigned each evening.
Is the quiz available for practice?
Yes. Practice problems and solutions are published, along with Quiz 1 and its solutions, and the quiz is designed to feel like Quiz 1 of 6.001.
Are there larger programming exercises?
Yes. Later homework comes with supporting code files, including a Nimrod game and an adventure game, and one lecture covers the Henderson picture language.
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