Description #

The goal of CS51 is to give you insight into the difference between programming and programming well. One and the same problem can be solved in different ways, and the different solutions can vary along multiple dimensions including correctness, readability, testability, maintainability, scalability, efficiency, and elegance. Optimizing across all these dimensions requires judgement, but pays off abundantly. Whether you’re writing code yourself, collaborating with other software developers, or vibe-coding with a coding agent, it’s crucial to know whether a program is written well.

Your ability to recognize well-written programs is directly related to the array of tools at your disposal. The course teaches fundamental concepts in the design of computer programs, emphasizing the crucial role of abstraction. You will learn to program in a variety of paradigms – including imperative (familiar from CS32 and CS50 but seen here in a more elemental form), functional, and object-oriented. The elegant multi-paradigm programming language OCaml is the ideal language for manifesting these ideas. Important ideas from software engineering and models of computation will inform these different views of programming. You should come out of the course not only a better programmer in any language, but also a better computational thinker, with a much broader range of tools at your disposal and ability to analyze the quality of programs.

Considering taking CS51? #

We recommend starting with the course syllabus.

After that, a good way to get a sense of the course content is to read the first few chapters of the course textbook, which was specifically written for this course.

Important notice about late enrollment #

Enrollment in CS51 once labs have begun (the second week of class) is restricted. Please read the late enrollment policy.