WARNING

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Semester 1

Chances are that if you are reading this, you are starting with ETH, so here a few important remarks:

• Make sure to keep up with the course content. Catching up after the semester ended is hard
• In D-INFK, for most people, the lectures are not very helpful, however the exercise sessions are
• Make sure to switch exercise classes if you don't like a TA's teaching style. You don't have to change the registration on MyStudies, you can go to any class you like.
• Don't hesitate to ask questions in exercise classes

DISCLAIMER

Semester 1 is not indicative of the workload in later semesters. It is (by far) the highest workload semester.

Discrete Maths (DM)

Managed via Moodle

This is the course most people fear in this programme, for a reason. For the longest time, it has had pass rates of below 50% and as far as I am aware, this has not improved with the new professor.

Fear not however, as this exam is part of an exam block and you will pass or fail the entire block, so if you are good enough in the other courses, the grade of DM doesn't matter too much if your goal is just to pass.

The reason that this course has this poor of a pass rate is that most students had not previously done proofs much, if at all, and if they have, most likely nowhere near as formal as is required in this subject. Thus, be aware that this course will, if you are trying to pass it and have not done much proving (and it doesn't come naturally to you), most probably be the highest effort course of this semester. Thus, at least factor in a whole day outside the lectures and exercise classes per week for this course if you fall into that category.

Make sure to follow the course in any case!

The exam is very time constrained for probably about 90% of the people and is almost entirely proofs. To prepare for this, solve as many old exams as you can, but especially the more recent ones (maybe apart from FS25, that one had a 0% pass rate because it was the last one from the old professor)

Remark

I had to take that one due to being sick at the winter exam, so you can see what I mean with the point that you don't need to pass it to pass the first semester

Linear Algebra (LA)

HS 26 link: https://ti.inf.ethz.ch/ew/courses/LA26/index.html

This probably is the most straight forward course in this semester, which doesn't mean it's necessarily the easiest (though it arguably is due to the predictability). Its lectures are good while Prof. Gärtner teaches and not all too great when Prof. Weissmantel does (may have improved since HS24, he teaches the second half of the course).

This is why it's important to find a good TA.

Furthermore, it's important that if you think you are good at LA (because you have covered it in Schwerpunktfach at High School), don't go into this course overconfident. It is much more proof-oriented than you are probably used to, so don't just go and skip the first three weeks, or you may find yourself in major trouble later on. The SpF will of course help you in this course, but you won't have covered nowhere near all topics of this lecture.

Introduction to Programming (EProg)

HS26 link: https://lec.inf.ethz.ch/infk/eprog/2026/

EProg is a very interesting course in that the content isn't necessarily hard, but the written exams can even catch out proficient Java developers due to them asking edge cases and the like.

If you have (fairly) extensive programming experience

especially in Java or another object oriented programming language, you may possibly safely skip most of the lectures (but not the first ones, as they teach EBNF, which you probably haven't seen), if you at least do the bonus exercises each week.

Then, during the exam preparation phase, solve a few of the theoretical exams and coding exams such that you know what kind of questions they may ask.

If you have little to no programming experience

then it is important that you follow this course along closely, as you will be programming quite a bit in Java not only here, but also in A&D. While this programme is definitely manageable without programming knowledge, you need to be aware that it will need more effort, because for people with previous experience, EProg is a fairly low effort subjects up to the exam preparation phase.

That should not deter you, I am sure you will manage just fine, just as a heads-up and to remind you that the exercise sessions exist, which are likely to be very quite empty (because a large portion of people already have coding knowledge, so will skip these classes), so the TAs can help you much more with your own questions.

For the bonus, there (typically) are two timed bonus exercises, where you have two hours on a specific day to solve the exercises. In those weeks, I would recommend that you solve, or at least have a look at, the normal exercises.

All hand-in happens via GitLab, and you should (ideally) an SSH key for the Git CLI, as that is more secure. See the git guide for more details on that

The exam is split into written and programming parts, both happening right after each other. For the programming part, you will have access to IntelliJ, a Java IDE by Jetbrains. Consider yourself lucky, because my year was the last one to use Eclipse...

Algorithms and Data structures (A&D)

Managed via Moodle

A&D has partner work with randomly assigned partners from your exercise session. Make sure to coordinate a meeting during the session. In this partner work, you solve the exercise sheets, and you also correct and give feedback to other groups, which is known as "Peer Grading". These assignments, as well as the peer grading and the mini quizzes all contribute to bonus.

Then, there are the programming tasks via Code Expert. See the infra guide for more details on how it works and how to log in.

In these tasks, you are asked to implement algorithms seen in the lectures to solve problems, all within given time complexity constraints. The provided tests are excellent, and you can also write your own, if you like.

The exam works similarly, you have one part written, the other part coding.