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Semester 2 Tips & Tricks
Semester 2 is in my opinion (and the one of many people) the easiest semester in the entire Bachelor's programme for Computer Science. This is why I would highly recommend doing at least a GESS subject in this semester already.
It may also be advisable to pick another course, as you can always drop it if you feel overworked.
Below some notes on two subjects that are a bit out of the ordinary in this semester.
Parallel Programming
This course is a course is an example of a poorly taught course at ETH. The exercises during the semester, while interesting, aren't really worth doing (in my opinion) and the entire course can be studied using a summary in just a few full days of work. This is also the reason why taking an extra course with a semester end exam is feasible, as there is barely any work that needs to go into this course for most people.
However: Be sure to still follow this course along to see if you understand things.
DDCA
DDCA is a course with a professor that is quite famous in the programme, due to his energetic lecturing style. Furthermore, the entire course is live-streamed on YouTube.
The course consists of lectures and mandatory (with sort of attendance (they don't check that you were there, but you have to be there to get your lab results graded)) labs,
where you work with a Field Programmable Gate Array (FPGA) to develop small parts of a full MIPS processor using the Hardware Design Language verilog.
They are quite fun, typically take about 2 hours and account for 30% of the entire course's grade.
Thus, be sure to always do the labs, as passing this course is quite easy if you get (close to) the full grade in the labs. For the exam, make sure to start early, as the exam has some interesting exercise types which you need to learn. The optional homework also has some of these tasks and they also upload a video explaining how to do many of these tasks.