Fundamental Structures of Computer Science II

CS 202 is where you stop thinking of data as "whatever the array holds" and start choosing the right structure for the job — understanding why a balanced tree, a hash table, or a graph representation fundamentally changes what problems become tractable. You'll spend the semester implementing these structures in C++ across four homeworks, analyzing their performance, and working through midterm and final problems that test whether you can reason about tradeoffs, not just memorize operations. It builds directly on CS 201 and becomes the bedrock for everything after it — algorithms, databases, systems — because almost every later course assumes you already think in terms of these abstractions.