<p>CS10 is supposed to be a gentler introduction to CS. Some students say it’s really helpful, some say it doesn’t help at all with 61A. That might depend on prior knowledge, though. A community college level programming class, or teaching yourself the basics online or from a textbook could also help you prepare if you don’t want to go through CS10. Or you could watch some of the old 61A lectures online, they’re posted on webcast.berkeley.edu. It’ll give you an idea of what’s coming.</p>
<p>I’ve heard of students taking 61A with no knowledge and being fine before, too. Technically it’s still an intro class, they’ll teach you coding/python basics, it just goes really really fast. So if you don’t have past programming experience, you’ll have to work hard.</p>
<p>No, you shouldn’t take B before A. You need to have a good grasp on programming for B, and also concepts like recursion, OOP, and some of the data structures (linked lists, simple trees).</p>