I am waiting for the Fall 2014 course to start at Harvard and planning/hoping to watch the latest lectures as they are released, to pursue my verified certificate via edX.
My question is, will the Fall 2014 lectures be applicable to the problem sets, assignments and exams given on the edX platform? Should I just watch the currently available material via edX rather than live material?
This year, two problem sets were removed and three were added relative to last year. So it would be reasonable to expect some changes to the problem sets in 2014. However, the lectures themselves don't focus much on the problem sets - instead, they focus on important concepts, which the problem sets are designed to give you practice using, implementing and expanding on.
What's more important is to watch the Shorts and Walkthrough videos that are provided on the edX platform with each week's problem set. These videos specifically address the assignments and can be very helpful if you get stuck or are one of those "less comfortable" students, although they are ultimately optional.
A lot of effort goes into developing effective lectures, so even if Prof. Malan wanted to make some changes to his lectures, they probably would happen in small doses. If the lectures do change, he'll probably be trying to teach the same skills and concepts, only with different methods or examples. An exception might be, for example, if he decided to completely replace PHP with a different high-level language; but even that would only affect some of the lectures and I don't know of any plans like that.
As @lethaljd mentioned in a comment, you might have better luck asking on Facebook or reddit if there will be any major changes to the lectures; staff seem are more active there than they are here on StackExchange.
In David J Malan Style ... Short answer yes (you can watch new live episodes these lectures carries principles and concept on CS rather than focused on problem Sets)..
