In fall 2014, as two colleagues and I were readying ourselves to teach CS1 (in spring 2015), we decided to revamp the course, in the aim to reduce attrition (a long-standing problem in this intro course). Since then, I have revisited it several times: once funded by Google, and since spring 2017, funded by UTEP’s STEM Accelerator initiative. Often, I am asked what I did in this course. In this document, I leave out the details of all changes (I may address this in another document) to focus on the major changes I put in place.