Hi, welcome to CS 190 (will be CS 119L)! 🎉

Designing algorithms and programming them is one of the most useful skills in computer science, but only taking basic courses is usually insufficient for developing this skill. In this course, you will learn the techniques and skills needed to solve real programming problems. Much of your time will be spent writing programs on your own to solve problems.

This course will boost your skills by having a 6-week practice, taking place Wednesdays beginning at 6pm in SSC 216 and lasting three hours. We will first have a 15 to 20-minute lecture on some basic contents (mostly covered in 10C and 141), and then followed by a two-hour programming session with about 5 problems on this topic. Then in the last 20 minutes, we will discuss the problems, so you will have some ideas and hints if you want to finish the rest of the problems. Attendance is strongly encouraged since we will have TAs and readers helping you if you have any questions.

In the Fall 2023 quarter, problems from UCRPC (2nd week) and UCR team selection (3rd week) will also count toward your final grade.

How to register as CS 190: Step One: fill out this form with your basic info and prerequisite requirement. Step Two: you will receive an email from me the next Sunday evening during the time period when the registration window is open. Step Three: forward my email to your academic advisor, and s/he will register you or let you know when s/he gives you the eligibility. If you do not hear back, send a reminder once in a while.

How to register as CS 190 as a graduate student: Yes, you can take CS 190. Again, fill out this form and the BCOE Enrollment Assistance form.

We will use CampusWire for online discussions. We use codeforces to test programming assignments. The invitation will be sent to your emails at the beginning of the quarter. The course announcements will be sent via CampusWire, so please make sure you enable email notifications from these systems.

Prerequisites: CS 10C or CS 111 with “C” or better.

You should still attend the course and do the homework on time, even if you cannot register before the quarter.
If you need more information, you should send an email to the instructor.
Remember this is a 6-week course, and 100% based on the weekly homework. If you miss several lectures and homeworks, it is hard to make up and get a good grade.

Class Information:

Instructor: Yan Gu (email: ygu [at] cs.ucr.edu)

Lectures: ⏰ Wed 6:00 – 8:50 PM 🏫 Student Success Center (SSC), Room 335

TA and readers:

  • TBA

    • - Email: available on Campuswire

A Quick Note about emailing course staffs

Please refrain from unnecessarily emailing course staff because the emails are likely to be ignored (although usually unintentionally), or you may get a response very late if that person is busy at that time. We recommend you to post on CampusWire that is visible only to TAs and instructors, and thus anyone seeing the post can reply. You could (and should) email instructors privately in cases that require privacy.

📘 Textbook:

We will not explicitly use the textbook, but we would like you know that all UCR students have free access to the textbook, and you can refer to it when needed. Introduction to Algorithms (CLRS).
Third Edition. Cormen, Leiserson, Rivest, and Stein. MIT Press.
[UCR Library Link]