Smallberg seems to have plenty of reviews already that give a pretty good gist of him and the class. Here are some things I'll emphasize:

1) He does an excellent job of teaching the material, showcasing every detail, and making sure the class can follow along with him.
2) His lectures can get very dry, especially since they are almost two hours long.
3) He does not use slides. He just writes out different programs that illustrate what he wants to teach the class. This worked for me as it showed me the actual application of each lesson, but it requires you to take good notes.
4) Midterm 1 and 2 were combined this quarter and it was fairly easy with around a 90 average.
5) Final was more difficult than the midterm but still manageable. Average was around an 80.
6) Projects aren't too bad but there are a lot of them (7 in total) so just make sure to manage your time properly.

Smallberg is an absolute legend. He probably knows more about C++ than Bjarne Stroustrup and Dennis Ritchie (whom he mentions a lot). This is class is one my all-time favorites! It's also quite easy if you're willing to put in the effort with a good attitude. If you took AP CS in high school, you're chilling.

If your correctness score is 60 or below, 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.

What's exasperating is that despite all that was said above, there will be
people who will ask for a re-examination of their correctness score
without saying which test case numbers to look at or without having tried
those cases under multiple compilers or without running the Project 2
tester mentioned in FAQ #7. Those people are exhibiting the exact
characteristic that may have caused them to make the mistake that cost
them so many points: They don't pay attention to what they read.

As others said, the projects can be time consuming. Being a complete beginner, it took me several hours every day to complete the projects. Tests were hard for me and I completely tanked the first midterm, but pulled through for the second which saved me.

Smallberg is a good professor who clearly knows a lot about what he teaches. Discussion sections were not helpful for me unless I had a specific question. Textbook was beneficial to me.

Smallberg is a clear and helpful professor. He is open to questions, and is basically a walking CS dictionary. His lectures explain stuff very well.

You will learn a lot in CS 31, especially if you have no previous experience. It is rewarding, but if you have no prior experience, it will be very hard. His tests have a strange format that takes getting used to, and I got absolutely hammered on the first midterm, scoring below the 25th percentile.

I also spent more time in CS than the rest of my classes combined, which were Math 32B, Physics 1B, and Chem 30A. CS 31 is no joke if you're not a CS major.

He curves generously, but people still get hammered in terms of GPA. CS isn't an easy tech breadth, and you should think before choosing a CS tech breadth.

Finally, the book was kind-of useful.

The workload is INSANE. The weekly projects would take me all week to complete, spending every moment outside of my other classes on them. Great class if you love computer science

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. 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!

tl;dr: yeah take this class

Doesn't smallberg already have like 69420 reviews lol. Smallberg is fine, he taught well enough that you don't really need to go to discussions. (Most ppl skip discussions).

Tbh if you already took ap cs (and remember it), this class is a breeze and mainly review. There are like 2 midterms and a final if im not mistaken, all of which ask you to write a small piece of code. Timing is decent, although if you havent taken apcs, you might run out of time. If you have, then you could probably finish the tests in like 1/2 of the time. Not really any hwk, just projects assigned every 1 or 2 weeks. Each project takes anywhere from 1 hr to 8 hrs to do, but you have a week to do it so its manageable.

If you're a cs major, youre probably required to take this class anyways so just take it w/ smallberg.
if you're not a cs major, you should still take it if you wanna learn an intro to programming. (although maybe consider cs30 if you have 0 prior experience)

my only concerns is that my TA graded all of our stuff, and lowkey he was kinda picky. But after the first few projects, you know what your TA is looking for so its fine after that.

If youre reading this and this helped you out, pls review ur profs!! itll help us all out uwu