CS107E Schedule

Below is a preview of our week-by-week plan for the entire quarter. There may be slight adjustments and rearrangements as we go. The schedule for the final project is set and will not change.

In the readings below, K&R refers to Kernighan and Ritchie’s classic text The C Programming Language (accessible via Stanford’s subscription to Safari Books Online). Nick Parlante’s EssentialC is another great C reference. Please do the recommended readings before lecture for best effect!

Date	Topics/Readings
Week 1
Lecture Mon 1/7	Introduction and Welcome ( slides ) Before friday’s lecture, review our guides on electricity, binary/hexadecimal numbers, and the unix command line. Peruse this collection of video tutorials that were prepared to introduce unix to CS107 students. These videos cover basic concepts, common utilities, development tools, and some fancy productivity features – something for everyone! Check out this fun read on how the Raspberry Pi came to be for a taste of the adventure to come!
Lab/assign	No lab in first week	Assignment 0: Choose Lab Section, Learn Git ( writeup )
Lecture Fri 1/11	ARM processor and architecture ( slides , code ) Read Baking Pi ( intro, lesson1, lesson2 ) and skim Carl Burch’s Intro to ARM assembly. I also recommend Steven Wolfram’s blog post Untangling the Tale of Ada Lovelace for a nice description of Charles Babbage’s and Lady Ada Lovelace’s roles in developing the concept of a general-purpose computer. Here is a link to the VisUAL simulator Pat demoed in lecture.
Week 2
Lecture Mon 1/14	ARM assembly and machine code ( slides , code ) Before lecture, read/skim sections A3.1-A3.4 and A3.11 from the ARM Instruction Set Architecture manual. Enjoy Danny Cohen’s article Holy Wars and a Plea for Peace on the history of little-endian vs. big-endian.
Lab/assign	Lab 1: Setup your Raspberry Pi ( writeup ) Please do the Lab 1 prelab preparation before coming to lab.	Assignment 1: Implement a Larson Scanner ( writeup )
Lecture Fri 1/18	From Assembly to C ( slides , code ) Review ARM manual section A3.2 and 3.3 on conditional execution and branch instructions Brush up on C basics (syntax, data types, operators, control structures, function calls) via your favorite C reference; sections 1-2 of Nick Parlante’s EssentialC; or chapters 1, 2, and 3 of K&R. Skip content on I/O and standard libraries (we are bare metal!) Read Dennis Ritchie’s account of the history of C. Link to Compiler Explorer demoed in lecture
Week 3
Lecture Mon 1/21	C Pointers and Arrays ( slides , code ) Note: Monday is a university holiday. Julie will cover key content in a makeup lecture so we can keep on schedule. Please come Monday evening 7pm in Gates B12 if you are willing/able (or watch screencast once posted). Before lecture, read EssentialC chapters 3 (skip material on structures) and 6 (skip material on the heap and memory management) or K&R 5.1-5.4. C-strings are primitive compared to Java/C++ strings; take note of the manual effort required to use and pitfalls to avoid. The screencast of Monday’s night session.
Lab/assign	Lab 2: Below C Level ( writeup ) Prelab to prep before lab.	Assignment 2: Implement a Clock
Lecture Fri 1/25	C Functions () Read up on C functions (Chapter 4 in K&R, or Section 4 in Essential C). Read Thinking Geek’s explanation of the mechanics of local variables and stack frames.
Week 4
Lecture Mon 1/28	Communication and the Serial Protocol
Lab/assign	Lab 3: Debugging and Testing	Assignment 3: Implement a String Formatting Library
Lecture Fri 2/1	Modules, Libraries, and Linking
Week 5
Lecture Mon 2/4	Memory Management
Lab/assign	Lab 4: Linked and Loaded	Assignment 4: Backtrace and Malloc
Lecture Fri 2/8	C Mastery
Week 6
Lecture Mon 2/11	Keyboards and the PS/2 Protocol
Lab/assign	Lab 5: Keyboard Surfin	Assignment 5: Keyboard and Simple Shell
Lecture Fri 2/15	Graphics and the framebuffer
Week 7
Lecture Mon 2/18	President's Day Holiday
Lab/assign	Lab 6: Drawing into the Framebuffer	Assignment 6: Graphics Library and Console
Lecture Fri 2/22	Interrupts
Week 8
Lecture Mon 2/25	Interrupts, cont'd
Lab/assign	Lab 7: Raspberry Pi, Interrupted	Assignment 7: System Monitor with Interrupts
Lecture Fri 3/1	Sensors
Week 9
Lecture Mon 3/4	Project topic TBA
Lab/assign	Project Lab 1: What is Your Project?	Final Project
Lecture Fri 3/8	Performance
Week 10
Lecture Mon 3/11	Wrap
Lab/assign	Project Lab 2: How Are You Doing?
Lecture Fri 3/15	Free day (Payback for MLK)
Week 11
	Final projects due Fri 3/22