Smallberg is literally amazing. He just exudes niceness. And he seems to know everything. And he's absolutely outstanding at explaining things. And he's super helpful with difficult projects. And he's willing to talk about anything else in computer science you might want to talk about. And he literally explained data structures and algorithms so well I feel like its become ingrained in my brain. And the course material is so well organized. And.. need I go on. Even though I got caught up in the Nachenberg hype as first (he is pretty good though to be fair), Smallberg is way better. Smallberg rocks!!!
(Seriously this is not meant to be a joke in anyway Smallberg is actually amazing. I highly highly highly recommend this class with him. Or any class with him. Just take all the classes you can get with him.)

---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.

This class was honestly exactly what I expected going in, even though it was a weird quarter. I have taken some CS classes in High School and have a good grasp on object oriented programming.

Smallberg has a gift for delivering the material in a way that is accessible, easy to remember, and informative. He was a really top notch professor.

Projects / Homework:
All of them were unremarkable except,

Project 3 was the most interesting and long project we had. It was a simple RPG using keyboard characters and a dungeon. I didn't finish some recursive function and got -10% but other than that it didn't require much more than some creativity and planning. It was honestly fun and I'm proud of the code I wrote.

Project 4 was tricky but really easy to code once you figured it out. It was an optimization problem where we were graded on how fast our code went. Just paying attention and understanding data types and hash tables was enough to get 100% with less than two days of work. Pay attention in class and don't be afraid to review lectures.

Smallberg was an absolutely phenomenal professor for this class. Rarely do you find a teacher who is so skilled at explaining complex concepts in a simple fashion using real life examples. While many people recommend attending Nachenberg's lecture, I actually really enjoyed Smallberg's lecture since he often explained the reasoning behind C++ design decisions and dove deeper into specific topics. While attending Smallberg's lectures, it is still good to look over Nachenberg's slides since they do a great job of boiling everything down into a visual picture of what is happening.

The projects in this class can take up a ton of time if you are new to programming, however if you have prior experience they're really not that difficult (although still time consuming due to size). Rarely in classes have I looked forward to doing projects, however the CS32 projects are so well designed that they really allow you to test your abilities while building something fun like a game. The best advice I can give for the projects is START EARLY (especially if you do not have much coding experience). This will allow you to take time to learn along the way and not stress yourself out. Getting a 50+ page spec for Project 3 can be daunting, but if you simply start early and take it one part at a time, you will do fine.

The exams for this class were all very fair. Doing the projects and reviewing Nach's slides were the best way to prep.

If you are doubting taking this class, it can be a lot of work, but it is 100% worth it and you will learn a ton from a professor who is very knowledgeable and really cares about his students.

I came back to write a review for David after taking so many other CS lower and upper div classes.

My only words are "David is a legend."

Smallberg is love, Smallberg is life

Pretty solid professor, although his lectures can get a little boring sometimes. You definitely can't go wrong with Smallberg, and if you can pay attention for the entire 2 hours you will have a clear and conceptually deep understanding of the material.

The work for the class consists of five homework assignments, four projects, two midterms, and a final (which was made optional for our class given the circumstances). The homework assignments are reasonable, and can be completed in a few hours if done diligently. The first two projects are similar in difficulty to the homework assignments and do not require much work, maybe in the ballpark of a couple hours a day for a few days and you should be good. The last two are significantly longer and more difficult, but not impossible to complete on time; moreover, you will definitely strengthen your programming skills upon successfully doing them. The midterms were pretty easy in my opinion, and were doable with minimal studying if you paid attention and knew the material. It's not entirely clear what method he uses to assign letter grades, but 90+% raw = A is as good a guess as I have been able to make.

Overall, good professor and a fine class, even though projects 3 and 4 were a pain in the ass.

My only word for him is a bad word

granted this was during spring 2020 so corona made things tough but smallberg is the worst professor i've ever had. by the final, he hadn't graded either of the midterms or any assignment since week 3. he also never gave us a syllabus or true grading scheme until two hours before the pass/no pass decision deadline. he barely gave us an "estimate" ish of our grade an hour before we had to make those decisions for pass/no pass and was very snarky throughout the quarter in his responses to students. he also changed the entire format of midterms a few hours before the actual midterms themselves. i found it more useful to skip his lectures and use nachenbergs slides instead. nachenbergs slides will get you 10x farther than smallbergs lectures will. i spent 90% of my time all quarter doing work for this class and had to neglect my other classes. projects take an insane amount of time. project 3 is just pure insanity. terrible class. i did learn a lot of fundamentals (from nachenberg not smallberg of course) but this class was a nightmare

This class took up my whole quarter. The last half of the quarter the projects get crazy time consuming. It seemed like we were always doing a project or studying for an exam, there wasnt a time where I wasnt doing CS32. Smallberg definitely knows a lot about CS, but his lectures are filled with trivia about non-CS topics and him explaining what not to do. Whenever I went to lecture everyone was asleep or not paying attention and online shopping. We got behind in lecture, meaning for nearly all of the projects and homework assignments we were using topics that hadn't been talked about in class. Fortunately, Professor Nachenberg has slides that are extremely helpful, which is what my friends and I used to learn the material. There are LA workshops once a week usually which can be helpful depending on the LAs teaching. TA discussion section is also helpful (my TA taught us a lot clearer than the professor), but that depends on your TA. Be prepared to do a lot of self-study to get the concepts and have very little time to study for exams ( you usually have a project due the day before an exam). However, this is an extremely important class for CS so be sure to take it during a quarter where you can put all of your time into it!