General Information & FAQ

See the 6.005 Curricular Goals Map giving a dynamic graphical display connecting the class outcomes with the outcomes of other subjects in the Course 6 curriculum.

Class meetings. There are two 90-minute class meetings each week on Monday and Wednesday and one 1-hour class meeting each week on Friday. You are expected to attend all class meetings and to participate actively in exercises and discussions.

Laptops required. Classes will include multiple-choice questions and programming exercises that require a laptop.

Readings. Most classes will have a reading that you must read before coming to class. There is no course textbook.

Nanoquizzes. Every class meeting will begin with a short quiz on the required reading for the class, plus recent class meetings. Nanoquizzes are closed-book and closed-notes, with a 3-minute time limit. There will be approximately 25 nanoquizzes. Your lowest 5 nanoquiz grades will be automatically dropped, and you can make up missed nanoquizzes or low grades. More info: details of nanoquiz grading and makeup .

Problem sets. To consolidate your understanding of the ideas from class, you will do five problem sets, PS0 to PS4, involving both design and implementation work. Problem sets will be done individually. More info: collaboration on problem sets .

Code review. As part of each problem set, there will be a 2-day code-reviewing period when other students and staff will give you feedback about the code you submitted, using a web-based system. You will be expected to participate in this process by reviewing some of your classmates’ code. More details about objectives and guidelines for the code reviewing process: code reviewing .

Beta and final submission. Each problem set will have beta and final submission. The beta submission will be graded by an automated tester, and will be subject to code review. The final submission is due a week later. You will be expected to fix any failed test cases and revise your code based on code review feedback.

The final submission must address all the code reviews received by the beta submission – all the human comments plus all the automated checkstyle comments that are marked #important. You can address a code review either by changing the code to reflect the review or by including a source code comment in your code that explains why the code wasn’t changed. If code reviews are unclear, you can discuss them with the reviewers, but you still must edit your own code in reaction to the review. A grader will check the submission and deduct points if it hasn’t addressed the code reviews.

Since the final submission inevitably happens after code review for the problem set, it’s understood that you’ve looked at other students’ written solutions, and been inspired by other ways to solve the problems. You must be exceedingly scrupulous, therefore, in not using those written solutions during your revision. Both your original code and your revised code must be your own. Looking at other students’ answers to the problem set while you are revising your solution will be considered a violation of the collaboration policy .

Project. You will complete a group software development project at the end of the semester. The project will be done in teams of three students. Each team member is required to participate roughly equally in every activity (design, implementation, test, documentation), and we may ask for an accounting of what each team member did. A single grade will be assigned to all members of the team.

Team meetings. During the project, you and your project team will meet with your TA to discuss the work. Your TA will assign a grade based in part on this meeting. Team meetings will usually be scheduled during class times that will be reserved for this purpose.

Quizzes. There will be two quizzes, on dates specified on the course calendar. Each quiz will be comprehensive, drawing on any topics covered up to that point in the course, so e.g. Quiz 2 may include topics that were already covered on Quiz 1.

This topic has its own page: collaboration and public sharing .

The relative contributions of the various elements to your grade are:

• Quizzes: 30%. Nanoquizzes are worth 10% total, and each comprehensive quiz is worth 10%.
• Problem sets: 50%. PS0 is worth 6%, and PS1-PS4 are each worth 11%.
• Project: 10%.
• Code review: 5%. Judged by regular participation in code review and providing substantive, useful comments.
• Participation: 5%. Reflects your continuous participation in the course. Determined by completion of reading exercises, participation in class and in the online Piazza forum.

Letter grades are determined at the end of the semester. The default cutoffs are: a final average of 90 and above is an A, 80 and above is a B, 70 and above is a C. These boundaries may be adjusted downwards if necessary because of the difficulty of the assignments or quizzes, but the boundaries will never be adjusted upwards, so a final average of 90 is guaranteed to be an A. The boundary adjustment is done heuristically, and there are no grade quotas, no grade targets, and no centering of the class on a particular grade boundary.

Every student is considered individually in the final grading meeting, judging from their entire performance in the course. A single bad mark in an otherwise consistent record will often be discounted.