The labs are pretty great, albeit time consuming. If you understand the labs you are set for the tests.

Reinmann is a decent lecturer, but sometimes he goes of on tangents about hardware that are too confusing and not on the tests or labs.

The discussion sections are useless.

He messed up the first midterm with an impossible problem as the core of the test, but made it extra credit.

The other reviews are spot on and the grading is still the same.

Reinman's CS33 class moved very quickly. He slowed down the first three weeks to allow people to acclimate. I found myself to be completely lost in some of the lectures purely because each topic could have an entire class devoted to it. The class is meant to be a sampler platter of Comp Org. subjects with an emphasis on assembly (IA32 and a tiny bit of MIPS.) I was planning on dropping this class because the early lectures fried my brain. I'm glad I didn't because the material eventually soaked in and I came out with an A. Stick with it.

Breakdown:

Labs:
Averages were always something like 99% without extra credit. Bomb lab was super fun. Parallel lab was fun too for those interested in SMP and SMT execution. I absolutely hated the buffer lab (took me like 30 hours) primarily because I thought it was super confusing. I didn't understand the buffer stuff and stack discipline until right before the final. Came in clutch since it showed up on the final. Labs were worth 50% of the grade.

Exams:
Averages were generally in the mid to low C range. They're difficult but you get the full hour and fifty minutes. The key to doing well on Reinman's exams is to rely primarily on the textbook as a study resource and to use lectures as well as office hours to soak in the material and ask questions. I found that I learned more from lecture and office hours after having read the textbook beforehand. My advice: read the relevant chapter BEFORE lecture and then listen to the lecture and try to connect all the dots again. It'll help solidify the info in your mind. Midterm 1 was the hardest in my opinion since it was the first exposure to a CS33 exam. Midterm 2 was challenging but I implemented the aforementioned technique and ended up with a better score. I felt that the final was the easiest of all three exams. Each exam was worth 15% of the overall grade. Yes, the final was worth the same as a single midterm. Pretty cool.

Extra credit:
Reinman offered small amounts of EC through the labs. Example: parallel lab goal was to speed up code by using Open MP (API for parallel programming) to get a 3.5x speedup. If you achieved say...8x speedup you'd get 20 points EC or something of that sort. So your score on the lab would be (score+20)/total. The EC also carried into the total grade but was adjusted to be weighted with the labs.

Grading:
Reinman is a pretty generous grader. He will weight your later exams more heavily into the grade relative to the overall exam chunk of the grade if you improve. His philosophy is that grades should just come from understanding. They aren't meant to be the top priority. I think he was awesome in taking away a lot of the stress due to grades that pervades undergraduate academia. Recipe for an A: get marginally above median on the midterms. Get all the EC and 100% on all the labs. Get above median on the final.

Lecture quality:
Reinman really shines when it comes to questions and various branches (lol) from the main subject matter. He quite obviously possesses an IQ approaching or equaling that of a genius but somehow manages to deliver information in an understandable way. I found his slides to be just alright and not too informative. I wish he would have stopped and used the last 20-30 minutes of class to field questions and do review rather than letting us out early. He did a review session on the last lecture and it was extremely informative. I loved it. Very clear speaker.

Personality:
Glenn is a legend. MIT undergrad and UCSD grad. Extremely smart guy. Obviously works out and doesn't skip leg day. Solid calf development. Very accommodating and willing to help you with the class topics. Reinman realizes that most of the stuff in his class is pretty difficult and never refuses to answer questions. He's very approachable in office hours.

General Thoughts:
When someone would ask a question that led to a tangent, Reinman would start on it and redirect back to the material. I really wish he would have gone into more depth since relevant tangents spice up the lecture more.

Again, it would have been nice if Reinman had used the extra time at the end of class for review. He really stood out as a quality Professor during that last lecture, answering question after question with patience and clarity.

Writing this before the final, so no grade bias. He's a very nice guy and will go out of his way to accommodate requests. He clearly knows what he's talking about and is one of the smartest professors around. However, a lot of the lecture material is far too in depth to be understood. A good majority of people stop coming to class after the first midterm.

The labs are interesting and help you understand some of the basics, but the in depth concepts in the slides pretty much go over everyone's head. There's lots of opportunities for extra credit on the labs so do those.

He's generally available, but is also busy and out of town a lot. That said, I would recommend him for CS 33, but prepare to do a lot of outside studying and figuring out that Reinman doesn't even expect you to understand a lot of the material he teaches.

Professor Reinman demonstrates a clear mastery of the material. There has been perhaps one or two questions students have asked this quarter that the professor was unable to answer. He speaks clearly, and consistently queries the class as to whether they are following. He welcomes questions during lecture, and assigns involving labs that allow you to demonstrate the concepts you have recently learned. The class is a bit low level for my tastes (hah. get it?), but as far as the professor goes, 10/10 would recommend to a friend.

Professor Reinman is a very smart man. It's in your best interest to ask questions in his lectures. He presents the information, but can't know what level of instruction the students of the class already have, so Reinman seems to depend on the questions he gets in lecture to direct the concentration of the next portion of instruction.
He makes his projects a lot of fun and will explain any low-level concept to you. You can tell he's very passionate about hardware. I'm sure he'd be great to take for a hardware class, too.
Do any extra credit he makes available. It may show him your commitment to the material and may make more of a difference for your grade than you expect.

Ugh I thought this class was so hard. I always left lectures brain-fried and spent most of the time in lectures just trying really hard to understand. (GO TO LECTURES btw.) He's a cool guy though and tries to be clear and helpful. You can tell he kinda wishes people would ask questions instead of keeping silent when he can look out and see wtf expressions on the faces of half the class. Tests are hard but curved well, so chances are if it was soul-crushingly difficult you probably still got a decent grade. Oh yeah, and don't procrastinate on the projects. I could procrastinate with the CS 31 and 32 projects, but not these.

Very funny professor. Handwriting is a little illegible when he writes on the chalkboard, but he mostly uses powerpoints anyways. I kept falling asleep, but it was mostly due to the lecture material. He slows down during difficult concepts and is happy to re-explain them again. We originally had 5 projects, but the 5th was given as extra credit bec. of time constraints. Labs were very doable, but get started early bec. many concepts are pretty new (most of the time is spent figuring out how to do it rather than actually doing the lab). Tests were fairly doable, and the average is usually fairly low and he curves generously. I only have had CS 31 and 32 experience with comp sci, and did pretty well in this class. He gave around 57.1% A's and 28.6% B's. HW: 1% each (5), Labs: 10% each (5), Midterm: 20%, Final: 25%. TAKE HIM!!!!!!!!

He was a good professor overall. He uses really good slides most of the time, but I think that in general, teaching from slides is confusing, because he can go much faster than a student's brain can process things. That's besides the point though.

Here's my advice: start the projects at least a week before they're due. The bit lab takes a lot of time to get used to thinking about, especially if you haven't taken CS M51A yet. The Bomb Lab took me a very long time, but that's to be expected any time you're just learning a language that is not easy at all to read. Get very comfortable with using the debugger. That's the real way to solve the problems.

What I really liked about professor Reinman was that he ALWAYS listened carefully to each question a person asked in lecture, and even if it didn't make complete sense, he would understand what the person meant and give a very good answer. While this slows down the lecture a lot, it's okay, because you feel very comfortable asking questions (though your classmates may hate you and make fun of you. I'm looking at you, girly-voice guy)

Professor Reinman is an excellent lecturer. He uses slides that he posts online, but inserts a lot of extra information during lectures. He's pretty funny and engaging, and is always available. I had a much better experience with him than I did with previous professors that taught this class. There are usually five projects, but our class had them cut down to three do to time constraints and unforeseen circumstances. He's very passionate about what he teaches. His exams are very fair: he reviews what's going to be on them, and the questions themselves aren't quite difficult. Recommend him all the way.