SMALLBERG. This class was easily the toughest I've taken thus far, and really made me miserable but was also the reason I completely switched my major and am on the path to become a software engineer. He will make you suffer, but in the way that makes you feel so proud of yourself in the end and one million time smarter. He makes CS something that anybody can learn, but also makes you your best version of yourself as a student. His sarcastic and slightly angry demeanor(raging about the many common mistakes of past students) is hilarious and enjoyable to watch. Thank you Smallberg, you are one hell of a teacher!

This professor is a mess. Grades were due, and we still did not receive midterm1, midterm2, or the final scores. A lot of students don't even know how they even got their grades since these scores were never given. In addition, professor returned our projects 4 weeks after the TA finished grading. I really don't know why he delays giving our assignments back, but he did it a lot ...

I actually dropped this class halfway through the quarter, but I thought to provide some comments. I received a very very low score on my project 2 that would make it impossible for me to succeed in this class. because I missed three hyphens. That's probably due to my own issue, but I thought there's no need to make people like me who received low scores feel worse --- the following are from the email the professor sent us: it may not be because of a lack of understanding of C++, but something more fundamental: You ignored
repeated admonitions in the spec and in class to avoid specific foolish
mistakes, yet you made them anyway. Whatever your field of study is, you
must fix this characteristic about yourself. No employer would dare hire
someone who ignores repeated spoken and written directives: You'd pose a
risk to the safety of yourself and others if you ignore safety rules, a
risk to the financial health of the company if you ignore legal regulations,
and a drain on productivity if your ignoring specifications causes you or
others to devote more time later on to correct your mistakes.

Smallberg was great. If you've done any coding before this class will be a breeze, even though there's a solid workload. If you haven't taken coding before, take the class in the fall or spring when you won't be stuck in there with all the compsci majors. He moves faster during fall quarter.

Professor is extremely knowledgeable. He we’ll be able to answer nearly anything you throw at him.

Unfortunately the lectures do tend to be boring and it’s difficult to stay focused for 2 hours.

If you have prior programming experience, this is fine since you can kind of half pay attention to the lectures and soak up what you need for C++, and ask questions if you have any. Personally I had no C++ experience before (mainly prefer Python) but I still got what I needed from showing up to about 60-70% of the lectures and looking at online materials.

If you don’t have prior programming experience, I don’t recommend taking this course. You will either do poorly or have to spend way more time than you’d want to, or both.

Overall: I took AP Computer Science A in high school, so many of the topics weren't new to me, so this class was definitely not hard for me but I can definitely see that it would be more challenging for someone with no prior experience. I took this class online because of COVID, so his lectures were all uploaded beforehand and he spent the actual class time doing Q&A, which I ended up not really going to. His lectures were not super interesting but they are informative and I watched them on 2-4x speed. Overall, Smallberg is very willing to help. I emailed him at midnight one day with a question about my bug, and he answered within 5 minutes with a somewhat passive aggressive but nonetheless helpful answer. He can come off as strict, but he just wants to prepare his students for the future.
Projects: Really weren't too bad; I usually finished them within a day, but start early just in case you run into bugs. Also pay attention to the specific requirements so you don't lose easy points.
Exams: 1 hour, taken online so the exams were all writing code (no code tracing, etc.) which made it pretty easy.

I learned a lot about C++ because of Smallberg. Absolutely legendary in how clear and concise he is. Once I emailed him and his answer was 6 characters long: "FAQ #2". Smallberg's clarity really makes the discussion sections kinda obsolete. Start your projects early. The project specs are pretty clear. In Fall 2020, the tests were just coding and weren't as hard as the coding for the projects, just stay calm. Don't worry about the computer history in the beginning. Would take again.

Dear professor Smallberg, I can certainly see why you received so many compliments in previous years. You are a great lecturer, making everything super clear. Your assignments were fine, some of them are very interesting.

However, you are irresponsible. On week 10, we only get 4 out of 9 assignment grades, and the midterm grade was missing as well. Then, based on the first 4 assignment grades, you tell me my "estimated grade is B+". That's 2 HOURS before the deadline for changing grade type. So I changed this course to P/NP. Then you released the rest grades, I got 100 on all of them. At the very end of the quarter, I still do not know my midterm grade nor my final exam grade. You promised you would post the grade, but you didn't.

I won't complain at all if I screwed it up myself. But your irresponsibility leaves my grade with a question mark. I received a P, but I had been wondering if it wouldbe A- or an A if I did not change the grade type. Incomplete information about grades is just RIDICULOUS.

As a non-CS major, and someone who has pretty neutral feelings towards coding as a whole, I'm pretty mixed on this class. Projects are okay, pretty large time suck and often difficult. I didn't watch many of Smallberg's lectures and relied heavily on Nachenberg's slides, which got me through the projects without too much trouble. I hate the tests, mostly because I'm terrible at working through the bugs in a time-pressure situation. Having to switch between CCLE and visual studio on a time limit was stressful for me, and I think it gave an advantage to people with better home computer set-ups (I took one midterm on a laptop and one with two monitors and a nicer keyboard and felt much less stressed with the monitors/keyboard). So I definitely recommend getting all set up if you're going to be taking an online test with Smallberg. I was also a little annoyed that the "practice tests" were nothing like the tests we were taking-- I assume this is because they were modeled after the in person tests, but I really did not feel like they prepared me for the actual test. Overall, though, I don't think this class could be taught all that differently and it was an okay experience. As others have mentioned, I do wish Smallberg had been a little faster with scoring so that I could've made P/NP decisions or had a better feel for how I'd done on tests and projects (I made some of the same mistakes on multiple exams and didn't even know until another classmate happened to ask me about a similar thing), so just a bit frustrating. This was my second quarter with Smallberg though, and I would probably take him again if I could.

---Lectures: Smallberg's lectures provided all the necessary information, but they were not always super clear. Lectures were often not super organized and not very engaging.
---Exams: I took this class during online classes so exams were different than there normally would be. Both midterms and the final were only a few questions long, but they usually weren't too hard.

---Projects: The project descriptions were not always easy to follow, but the professor and TAs will clarify everything. None were unreasonably hard, and all were graded reasonably. Some of the later projects do take a lot of time and are not something you can cram in a couple days.

---Tips: Google "Carey Nachenberg CS32". You'll find animated slides for CS32 that are extremely helpful. Go to office hours whenever you are working on a project: it will save you a ton of time and frustration.