I take 35L with Dalmia Shivam, he is a nice guy. HOWEVER, I have to say, Aditya Joglekar and Aaron Zhou basically fucked up this quarter. As everyone know, each TA is in charge of an assignment per week. Aditya takes Assignment 4 which is due on week 5 's Monday. And he takes the entire quarter to grade it, which the grades comes out even after assign9 just 5 days before grades finalized in 12/23. Aaron Zhou was in charge of assignment 9 which is a brand new one. Everyone was busying on finals, and he decided to give only 20% on lab(easier part), and impossible-task homework(hard part) 80%. Don't believe it's Eggert decision. NO! It's TA 's choice that they don't want you to pass at least they want you to suffer. They don't fking care students, if they are still TA for the next quarter, watch out the assignments they take charge of cuz they are b_tches.

Eggert's class never fail to piss me off. The amount of work required for this class is ridiculous, and the pacing is just way too fast. On top of that, we all know Eggert writes these impossible exams where the average is 40%. I put so much time into this class and still struggled. No one really knows what's going on and everyone copies code off Github.

If I had known about Eggert before coming to UCLA, I wouldn't have come to UCLA.

I had a great TA (Zhaowei the GOAT), but still got absolutely assfucked by this class. Here are some tips for you so that you don't have the same shit ass experience I did:
Step 1: Don't take the class
Step 2: If you have to take it, get really familiar with the material from the first four assignments before week 1 so you have a crazy good advantage.
Tough it out for the first 4 weeks and you'll be good in terms of managing workload. The final was a straight clap, no amount of studying could have prepared me for that bullshit. Sure, I learnt a lot, but this class is broken.

He doesnt care if you understand the material, he makes no sense, his projects make no sense, he doesnt feel the need to make his projects easier because no one confronts him for reasons i dont understand. I wish i learned but i cant learn from him. Hes all over the place.

... and then we're toast!

Shout out to Ian Sommervill. Congratulations for writing the most boring textbook I've read in my life.

I'm sure the other comments have already painted quite the picture of this class. I'll spare you the repetition about how this class is a mess, has the most insanely unpractical workload I've ever seen, and absurd tests.

Instead I'll just outline some tips that may help you get an A like I did:
-Take notes in lecture, and really make sure you understand everything he goes over conceptually. Lecture can feel so bizarre, because it is almost never relates to the assignments you will have to do that week. But the tests are at least, if not over half conceptual, and understanding the conceptual will give you the extra edge to do well on the tests.
-Don't waste too much time on homeworks. If you did each homework legitimately, by yourself, from start to finish, you may be able to finish just before you graduate. Maybe. Just reference github instead.
-Do the practice tests. They are super helpful and similar to the real tests.
-On the tests, don't panic. The medians are 50% for a reason, you aren't supposed to be able to nail every question. There will be a question that will blindside you. Just write what you can, and throw in as much Eggert vocab that you learned during lecture and from the textbook as possible. Its okay if some of it is a little wrong too, just write a lot of stuff down with good vocab that is somewhat logical and move on
-Lastly, study. Many students go in thinking their notes will save them. Or that because the tests are so hard they don't have a chance and will use the textbook as a crutch. Not the best idea. If you understand 90% of the things he talked about in lecture and can do from memory most of the basic/intermediate tasks required in the homework by hand without notes, then you are set.

Also just take a nap during the first hour of the first lecture.

I decided to transfer after this class, now Im enrolled in CalPoly, and now I regret my first decision to attend ucla for cs.
With these non-sense classes, you'll waste a great amount of time.

Class is difficult and takes up more time than any previous class but is somewhat manageable. Class is graded on a curve and the average grade is around a B+ (maybe B or A-). This class teaches you a lot and gets you up to speed with actual software development.

To anyone confused about previous years' reviews, CS35L used to have lectures given by TAs instead of Eggert and more homeworks, and was much more difficult and chaotic. If you want more relevant reviews, take a look at CS97 from Spring 2020 onward, which was like the beta to the current 35L.

The main topics covered were Emacs (text editor), Unix, Shell/Bash Scripting, Lisp, Python, C, and Git. React and JavaScript were briefly covered in a lecture but were essential for one assignment and the entire final project. If you've never used React, knowing a little HTML/CSS/JS will help a lot.

Lectures/Homeworks: Eggert's lectures are a lot more theoretical and only cover a little syntax. You need to look up a lot of stuff for homeworks and teach yourself but you’ll learn a lot. Lectures are pretty interesting and I enjoyed them. The late penalty is pretty generous (only 1% off for 1 day late. 2^(N-1)% off for N days late). 3 or more (outta 6) of the homeworks were given extended deadlines. Homeworks can take up many hours.

Midterm and final are difficult and much different to traditional tests. You can't really study for them that much except for doing the practice tests. Many questions are open-ended and require you to understand instead of regurgitate. Some questions are pretty obscure/random. The tests are unlimited open-note, but extremely detailed notes on lectures only help on getting maybe an extra 5%. And don't leave any question blank. You will get some partial credit even if it's completely wrong.

For the final project, most people make a web app with React. Getting a good group where everyone does their fair share is crucial to not spending too much time on it. Your group presents to a discussion at the end of week 10. The project was graded generously (most got 90%-100%). And you get something to put on your resume