I've only had Smallberg for one (my first) quarter here at UCLA,
but I feel that my experiences in his CS31 class have given me
a decent picture of his style of teaching.

I'm a CS major, and had extensive programming experience throughout
high school in the form of APCS AB and a lot of external work
I did on a large-scale mod for Doom 3. I came into CS31 extremely
confident of my understanding and abilities -- too confident,
it turns out. If you have prior programming experience and develop
the initial impression that Smallberg's CS31 class will be a blow-off,
you're in for a tough time. For someone with previous experience
his lectures move at a snail's pace, but he is extremely thorough
and overall a very good teacher. If you have any misconceptions about
the material, you'll likely come out of lecture with a very solid
understanding.

That said, I was extremely overconfident. I didn't spend nearly
enough time on the first three or four projects and received crap
scores due to minor errors in my code combined with huge point
deductions due to me not taking the project reports seriously.
The midterm was equally bad -- I was surprised by the level of
difficulty of a few of the problems and ended up with a grade
only slightly above the mean. Once I got serious about the
projects, I received nearly perfect scores on them.
I did acceptably on the final, but not as well as I could have.
I ended up with a B in the class.

So, if you have prior programming experience and think that
CS31 is going to be a blow-off class (especially since
Smallberg's lectures move so slowly), you should learn from
my mistakes and get serious immediately.

Another thing: GO TO DISCUSSION. You'll get a good idea
of what will be emphasized on the exams this way. And the
TA's often drop little hints about the projects which
can come in handy in deciphering various details of the
somewhat ambiguous project specifications.

I was okay with computer science before, when I did java in high school. I didn't love it, but it was fine, as I always liked subjects that required analysis and deep thought regarding the situation.

But this class was horrible. It is EXTREMELY time consuming, and all I did the quarter was computer science. I only took 2 other classes, and it's a relief that I did. All I would do during the week was work on my program, and would have to walk 40 min back and forth from the TA office hours whenever I needed help. I don't think I am as stupid as this course made me out to be, but even with all this work, I got an average of 50% on the projects.

To boot, I got a TA that did not help me much. Whenever I would ask a question, he would act like I was supposed to already know this stuff, and give me very confusing answers that would lead me nowhere.

I think Smallberg is a pretty nice guy, not aiming to give his students a hard time or anything, but his lectures are somewhat confusing and very boring, maybe either possibly leading to the other.