C Study Group for R Contributors 2024

This is a study group meeting once a month for existing/aspiring R contributors that want to gain/refresh basic skills in C programming.

It will run from January to June 2024.

Study materials

The main study materials are from the C sessions of CS50, Harvard’s Introduction to Computer Science. This will be supplemented with a chapter from Deep R Programming on R’s C API.

Schedule

Commitment

Participants should study the material and attempt the corresponding exercise before each book club meeting.

A suggested weekly schedule for the CS50 material is

• Week 1: Watch “Lecture” video (2.5 hr).
• Week 2: Watch “Shorts” (~6 x 10-15 min videos that expand on topics in the lecture). Do the “Lab” from the corresponding session in CS50 2023.
• Week 3: Watch “Section” (~1hr video going beyond the lecture). Try one or more Additional Practice Problems.
• Week 4: Meet to share solutions to the Lab/Practice Problems. Optional: Do “Problem Set” and submit if doing course for credit, or if you want to receive an automatic grade to check your progress.

The labs from CS50 2023 are designed as learning problems and include hints. The additional practice problems are often harder than the problem set, however we suggest leaving the problem set till after the meetup and attempting this independently (this is expected if you are doing the course for credit).

There is the option to do further study towards a free certificate from Harvard or a verified certificate from edX (~200 USD, financial assistance program available on edX). See the CS50 website for details.

At book club meetings, participants should be prepared to share and discuss their work on the exercises.

Timing

The book club will typically meet on the 4th Tuesday of the month, from January to June 2024, in two cohorts:

• Cohort 1: 12 noon - 1 pm London.
• Cohort 2: 9 am - 10 am San Francisco.

The meeting will be on the 5th Tuesday in January and times will move when UK/USA daylight saving times end. Check the events page for actual times in your time zone, along with Google calendar and iCalendar links.

Sign up to attend the sessions on the R Contributors Meetup.

Sessions will be recorded and shared on on the R Contributors Slack for people that can’t make the meetings.

Further help

Participants are encouraged to join the #c-study-group channel on the R Contributors Slack to discuss with others as they work through the material. CS50 also has communities on multiple platforms that you can connect to.