Lectures are Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays from 1:15-2:05 in the NVIDIA Auditorium, Huang Center. Lecture notes are available in advance and provide an outline for much of the material that will be presented in class; I recommend that you print out the notes and bring them to class so you can mark them up with additional notes during lecture.
I recommend against using laptop computers during class. Although some people prefer taking notes on a laptop instead of by hand, educational studies have shown that students using laptops tend to learn less effectively than those without laptops: there are too many distractions available on an open computer.
There is no required textbook for this class: the material of the course is defined by the lectures and does not exactly correspond to any existing book. However, I recommend the following book if you would like an additional source of material to supplement lectures:
Each page of lecture notes lists related readings in this book at the front of the notes page.
The class will have two discussion sections that meet four times over the course of the quarter, once for each project. The purpose of the sections is to introduce the projects and provide additional material that may be relevant as you work through the projects. The sections meet on Tuesdays (4:15-5:05 in Building 200, Room 305) and Fridays (10:00-10:50 in Gates B03). The Tuesday and Friday sections will cover the same material, but they will be taught by different CAs so there may be some differences in presentation or style; you can attend either section or both.
The class includes four programming projects based on the Pintos operating system, plus one problem set. The Pintos projects involve a significant amount of work (as much as 10-20 hours per week, according to students who have taken the class), so it's best to take CS 140 in a quarter where your other course load is lighter than normal. You must work on the Pintos projects in teams of two or three.
Each student is allowed a total of 72 extension hours for this class, which may be spent in units of 24 hours on any project(s) throughout the quarter. Once your extension hours have been used up, late work will not receive any credit. Extension hours are intended to handle unexpected problems such as illness.
The class will have a midterm exam during the sixth week (February 13-17) and a final examination during exams week. You may bring two double-sided 8.5x11" pages of notes with you to exams; other than that, exams are closed-book.
Grades for the class will be determined based on a 100-point total score computed as follows:
| Problem Set | 5 | points |
| Projects | 50 | points |
| Midterm | 15 | points |
| Final | 30 | points |
| Total | 100 | points |
Students who may need an academic accommodation based on the impact of a disability must initiate the request with the Student Disability Resource Center (SDRC) located within the Office of Accessible Education (OAE). SDRC staff will evaluate the request with required documentation, recommend reasonable accommodations, and prepare an Accommodation Letter for faculty dated in the current quarter in which the request is being made. Students should contact the SDRC as soon as possible since timely notice is needed to coordinate accommodations. The OAE is located at 563 Salvatierra Walk (phone: 723-1066).