Miodrag is objectively the worst professor I've had at UCLA. He does almost no teaching during the course of the 2 hour lectures. Instead he passes the time by flipping through slides or going over needless administrative items. Almost none of the content that is on the exams can be learned from him. You must hope that your TAs cover the material or that the exams closely follow the pattern of previously posted exams (the only saving grace of this class). His total disinterest in our success in the class is revealed when he does such things as answer his cell phone during the midterm right by his microphone so that the Mong Learning Center reverberates with his voice. Perhaps this is already clear but I highly recommend avoiding him.

This professor may have a speech impediment and a thick accent but at the end of the day you can understand him if you really listen. However, I'll agree that this class can be difficult to get anything of worth from the lectures. He often goes on long tangents. When he explains topics you have to really focus to get what he's trying to say but if you do then you'll be ok. I had the luxury of a great TA so I just had to wait until discussion to understand everything. There are 5 quizzes which are homework based so do the homework (it's pretty short and not too time consuming). The first midterm was really easy and the second fairly difficult. The killer is the final. If you are able to do 2.5/5 problems solidly then you'll do well. If you do a BUNCH of practice finals and understand the different types of problems that always show up on those practice finals and understand in general how to approach them then you will be good. Looking over your notes and quizzes isn't enough unless you are really smart. The final is the worst part of this class, I have to emphasize that practice problems will save you. And the TAs are your best friend in this class.

Miodrag's teaching style involves him explaining his slides and the students participating. He watches the students reactions to his lectures to see if he should repeat something or go more in depth. In class he would say pretty sexist and outrageous things (check our the pot-konjak tumblr page for more), to try to make us understand a design decision or implementation. He also really liked a democratic system and we would spend a good amount of time every class voting on things like the dates of tests and quizzes, the topics on them, how much they would be worth, what would be unreasonable for him to put on an exam However, the material itself is very difficult, and his test questions often require a full system implementation (for example I remember something like design a system that finds the min and max of 4 16-bit numbers but you can only use 1 ALU and 2:1 muxes). Going to discussions and office hours is pretty critical to doing well in this class, as he really likes tricky problems that seem massive and complicated but actually have design shortcuts. His office hours will involve him only letting one student in at a time, and completely roasting you for being dumb, but he actually explains things pretty logically. Overall this class was a pretty unique experience here at UCLA and I would recommend.

Never have I ever had a class where I was in such obliviousness. The class is very unstructured and I have burned out brain cells trying to connect what he's saying in lecture and very unhelpful and the lecture does not help at all with anything. The only savior I had was my TA office hours and the discussion section, but even then that was hard. I do not recommend taking this class if you want to actually learn logic design because I learned absolutely nothing and still understand absolutely nothing, but if you're doing this for the easy B, because he does curve generously(which is only fair considering how nerve-wracking this class is), then take it.

This class is not at all good, and I ended up dropping it. I understand that Miodrag can't write handwrite examples (he's paralyzed) but that doesn't make up for the lack of a suitable alternative method for teaching the material. Class consists of him reading off his slides (which he posts online but are very hard to self-study with) and sometimes calling on people. And there's no whiteboard, so people can't come up and do problems for the class to see. Moreover, he and the TA's are often out of touch with each other. They don't always know what he wants on the problem sets, and sometimes they give conflicting advice on how to solve problems. Moreover, Miodrag is not at all helpful in his office hours. He gets angry easily if you ask him how to do something (which is the reason why you came to his office hours in the first place) and is not a very pleasant person to begin with. Considering the poor organization of the class that makes it difficult to learn anything, I would not recommend taking M51A with this professor.

Participate in the class, do the questions that he asks. The textbook is not that helpful.

This guy is the most condescending, politically incorrect professor to roam the face of the earth. He's sort of funny at the beginning, but after 6-7 weeks of him calling everything "trivial" and only referring to a select few students as his "best students", you begin to get fed up with his monotony. You can't really understand anything he says as well, although I sort of feel bad about saying this because he seems to be trying really hard to get the english out.
But, the weirdest things he does is make completely random and completely offensive comments about women. Some quotes include: "How often do you beat girlfriend?", "Who do you think is most beautiful girl in class?", as well as suggestions to bring guns to first dates and, perhaps the most incorrect suggestion of all, to "go kill yourself" after you do something wrong.
But, all in all, I would take this class again with this professor. Miodrag doesn't just sell you a class; he sells you an experience. The mio-drug pot-cognac experience.

Potkonjak is definitely a genius and let's us know often by explaining how he did this and did that and how he was the top 0.2% of his class or some other fact. He can always answer your questions if you have any, and he'll take the time to explain it again if you didn't understand. My only gripe with him is that I aced the midterms, aced the quizzes, and did alright on the final and ended up with a C+...he regraded my final to a 17/100 from 70/100. If you are taking this class, just make sure that he is abundantly clear on how he is going to grade or regrade the final...because he gave absolutely 0 partial credit. The obvious approach to our final was to complete 1 or 2 problems and neglect the other 4. Good luck.

I'm not sure why he's rated so low, maybe cause people are scared of him. But Miodrag is hands down the best professor I've had at UCLA. Yes, he is extremely scary and WILL make fun of you, but deep down he really cares about his students. He would ask the class every week if he was moving too fast or too slow, allowed us to negotiate dates and materials on quizzes and exams, and repeatedly told us not too worry because there would be "plenty" of A's. I got slightly above average on both midterms, never got a final exam score, and a solid A in the class.

You must go to every single lecture and discussion, otherwise you will learn absolutely nothing. The class starts off pretty slow with boolean algebra, but by the end it is extremely difficult. There were five homeworks (never collected) and five quizzes in discussion which were composed of a randomly assigned homework problem. So do the homework, and it's a guaranteed A+ on all the quizzes.

The way to excel in this class is to participate in lecture. Yes, it is extremely intimidating, and 90% of the class never spoke up or went up to the board, but since Miodrag's lecture style (which was extremely effective) is ten minutes of lecture followed by an hour and half of having students come up to the board and doing ridiculously difficult problems (which he will tell you is a 3 in difficulty on a scale of 1-100), the best way to learn is to go up to the board. He literally walks you through everything you have to do in front of the class, so don't worry if you have no idea how to do the problem. You will after you're done on the board.

The midterms and finals were all extremely difficult, but he posts previous midterms and finals on his website for you to practice. Studying for the exams just consists of doing the previous midterms and finals. He won't give you the answers but he holds and extra session before the midterm (2 before the final) and will do whatever problems you ask him too. The TAs will do this too, both in discussion and office hours. The midterms and finals consisted of 6/7 problems, 1 straight off the HW, 1/2 straight from previous midterms/or finals, and the rest were new.

As difficult as this material is, I feel that Miodrag prepared us extremely well and I was confident walking in and out of all the exams.

PS Saro is perhaps the greatest TA I have ever met, and if I could I would have him TA for every class I take at UCLA, but sadly I think he left for a job at Google (go figure).

The only review about him you need is the one from 3/26/2011. Completely comprehensive and as accurate as it gets without interacting with Miodrag.

Best prof I ever had.