This class was THE most tiring, time consuming class of the quarter and also the cause of my sleep-deprivation. Mike expects you to have a solid foundation of C++ concepts (which I didn't really have) entering the class, where the topics he teaches build on one another from that base. He was very intimidating during the first few lectures, and a good portion of students ended up dropping the class after the first week. Each of his lecture slides have at least 100 slides each (some up to 200+), with each slide jam-packed with words. It is crucial that you go back and read the slides yourself/review or you WILL fall behind and get lost in the class VERY quickly. Try to attend lectures because he does do in-class participation questions often that count for points. There are nine homework assignments total that increase in difficulty and he drops your two lowest homework scores. Doing the homework is probably the most time consuming but he also bases his midterms and finals off of them so it's best to try and understand how to do them - form a study group because it will be torture if you do it yourself. As long as you put in the effort and do all the work, you can survive but this class will require you to put in A LOT of your time and hard work.

PiC10B is so hard. This professor is so hard. So here is a mini-guide to maybe help you get through this class if you ever stuck with Lindstrom. Lindstrom lectures so fast, you won't have time to write down everything from his slides if you're a handwritten-notetaker. His slides are full of words, like almost actual sentences, so don't even try to write your notes by hand - it'll be best to print out the slides and write on them or to use digital note-taking for those of you with ipads and apple pens and stuff. When he posts his slides it is best to read everything in the slides before going to lecture in order to understand better and to have questions ready. Use class time to sit and listen and understand the coding theory and syntax, and to ask questions. If you fall behind on this, it is very hard to catch up on what he is talking about because everything builds on each other. Homework is hard, but like he says on his grading policy/syllabus, you need at least 3 days to do the hw well. Participation is one of the easiest ways to get the points, so be sure to attend lecture, you never know when he'll pull up a participation question; also, participation questions are used in discussion so be sure to attend discussion. In discussion, the TA will usually give hints on the harder hws, but they don't give out the slides for the discussion, so take pics of the slides. He curves generously, but don't count on it to save your grade - the material is really dense, so be prepared for mental breakdowns throughout the quarter.

I took this class remotely Spring 2021. Most people got an A or A-, but the class was SO UNREASONABLY HARD. You get points off on the homework for the stupidest things and they take 10+ hours each week most of the time. To get an A, you need a 95%. A 95%! At the end of the class, he lowered the grade cutoffs for every single grade except an A, so even though I ended with 93% that was still an A-. The final was only 5% but was literally impossible I got absolutely shafted, so you basically had to get 100 on most homeworks which was also extremely difficult. If you don't absolutely have to take this class with Lindstrom, DON'T.

TLDR: Do not take this class unless you want to have a breakdown in Boelter at least once a week. If you have to like I did at least do NOT take it with Mike Lindstrom. This class is a special kind of hell.

The class consists of one homework each week, a midterm, and a final. The homework seems easy the first couple weeks but do NOT underestimate the learning curve come around week 4/5. Make sure to get full points on the first couple of homeworks and if you get points off clarify why and try to get points back. I got a 5/20 on one homework because I forgot to change the name of the header file in my code and it technically didn't compile. 2 letters cost me 75% of that homework so be very careful with them. Go to office hours, my TA was Sam and she was super patient and helpful when I had questions. If you still need help on top of that there are fraternity chapters that offer free tutoring. There are three different chapters in Boelter and Boelter Hall that can help you, go there and say you need help with C++ and there's usually someone there that knows enough to help get you through the homework. The midterm and final are ridiculously hard. The average for the midterm was around 50% and the average for the final was 39%. You only have 50 minutes for the midterm which is multiple multiple-choice, code correcting, and code writing. On top of that Mike grades ridiculously harshly and with no remorse. People who submitted a re-grade for their midterm later hoping to get points back on a question usually lost points. The final turned out to be online for us considering the early end of the winter quarter. Although the exam was 24 hours online, open note, and open web the average was still only 39%. I submitted my exam and got an exam about an hour after it was due that my exam was somehow in a format that couldn't be opened by my TA. I quickly emailed her my exam again asking why the first submission wasn't working and she couldn't tell me why which is weird considering that was the same format I submitted my homework. Although, the copy I emailed my TA worked and I spent hours on the exam Mike gave me a 0 because the first copy I submitted wasn't working and the second one was technically late. Literally less than an hour late and only because the first copy wasn't opening right for a reason no one could explain. Mike refused to accept my exam even though I don't know why he thinks I would go through all that just to cheat an extra 50 minutes on a 24-hour exam. Mike doesn't care about helping the students who don't have prior experience or a knack for coding. His whole class is structured to weed out the very best and praise them, while not bothering with those struggling. It is ridiculous for an introductory class.

hahahha this class was so fucking hard. Mike is incredibly smart like a straight up genius which makes it hard when he’s explaining abstract concepts, of which PIC10B has a lot. There is so much fucking theory and his slides are VERY comprehensive (each topic had about 200 slides). That being said, I’m glad I took his class instead of the other professor’s. Falcon was the other prof and is a much better teacher, but that just means the curve of her class was tougher. By the end of the quarter, this class had 15 people left and the mean and median of the final were both around 45%. I was exactly at the class average for the final. The average for the midterm was around 50% and I got 10% higher than it. So overall, this gave me an A-. I also spaced and forgot to submit the last homework assignment, which is fine since he drops 2 hwks, but it probably would’ve replaced a lower hwk score I got before. Personally, I didn’t find it too difficult to grasp the difficult topics once I got around to studying them, but I did notice other students in the class had a harder time. If you have a solid foundation from PIC10a and think you understand C++ relatively well, this class won’t be impossible. It was still pretty difficult for my friends in Falcon’s class to understand the topics, and they probably learned much faster than my class did, but the curve helped me get a higher grade than I think I would’ve in Falcon’s.

This class is definitely difficult compared to PIC 10A, but he goes over concepts fairly well. He has a rubric to get good practice for robust coding, and as long as you follow it, have a fairly good code, your homework is fairly manageable.

There was a huge curve at the end of the class, so as long as you try your best, this class will be good.

If you want to get easy As, please do not choose Math142!!!! Mikel assumes that a score of 55% of the final exam to be excellent, so you will find how hard for you to outshine in this course. However, you will learn a lot from this course if you are not a Math major, because this course involves considerable knowledge of calculus, ODE, PDE and linear algebra, and you will thrive to master them. Besides, make sure that you know quite a lot about physics, because this course will base many of its models on physics world, which COULD be harsh if you have never taken a similar course before.
All in all, Mikel is dedicated to this course though it seems that he is still lack in experience, and the TA Xu Chen is sooooooooooooo cute :)

The grade just went out and looking bak to this class I do have some tips to share.
Mike is a really nice, knowledgeable, and caring instructor. Don't be sacred off by the work load and difficulty because you do learn a lot about C++ and right now I can say I'm pretty confident about my C++ knowledge because of this class.
To get good grade: try to do every homework assignment! Although the lowest two are dropped, it is easy to have bugs that are hard to be fixed in those lengthy challenging assignments. Before the midterm/final, go over every slide and try to rewrite the code by yourself instead of just browsing over.
NOTICE: workload is challenging. Each homework may take 5-15 hours to complete and by the time of final you'll have 1500+ slides to study for.
Still I'd say this class is doable in terms of actually learning C++ and getting a descent grade. As he says, scoring 55% above on his tests is respectable, and almost half of the class gets A or A-. With that being said, don't panic before the final and just try your best.
Recommend taking 10B with Mike than with other professors.

By far the hardest class I took last quarter. The homework assignments take a total of 5-10 hours for most people to complete, and the exams are brutal. The class average for both the midterm and final are roughly 40%, but that equates to roughly a high B in the class. Participation is mandatory, since he has participation questions in discussion and lecture. He's pretty friendly and wants you to do well, on top of being a good professor, it's just that his exams and homework are so hard that it will most likely take up most of your time.

I normally give longer bruinwalk reviews, but he gives most of the info on this class online at: http://www.math.ucla.edu/~mikel/teaching/pic10b/

Check the PDF's titled "Course Details" and "On course difficulty, grading practices, etc." for information on the class.

Michael is a good guy in teaching. He will give his help when you come across difficulties and he responds to emails very quickly. However, he sometimes make some definitions unclear, which he tries to make the explanations entertaining but only ends up being more confusing. the class is bruincasted but the quality of the video is not good at all. Michael will give you his very tough grading scale in his syllabus which might scare the heck out of you but he will eventually curve the grade such that 25% of the students will receive an A range. I earned a overall 91% which results in a final grade of A; if he stick firmly to his grading system, such score will only give me a B+.