I mean... it's Eggert.
This class is insanely hard, because it's Eggert. The tests are difficult even after watching every lecture, studying, doing the projects, and reading the textbook. That's just how it is. But the curve is great! Midterm and final were both very low averages, but significantly curved, as is classic in Eggert's classes. The lectures focused on the theory behind programming languages in general, as well as the theory behind specific languages (OCaml, Prolog, Java, I'm probably missing one). The projects were much more focused on exploiting specific features of those languages. The final project was non-programming, but rather a comparison of features among a few languages based on what we'd learned in the class. Projects were /insanely/time-consuming if you didn't have help, so start early and set aside a lot of time.
Lectures, as always with Eggert, were engaging and interesting, but kinda hard to follow since they are rarely organized and linear.

I did not like this class very much. I thought the material was very very important, but I feel like the online format combined with Eggert's brand of more chaotic teaching methods were not a good fit. The TAs were really nice.

The most important thing I got out of this class was I made a bunch of friends doing the project together, and I feel like I got a good overview of SWE.

The worst part of this class by far was the tests and the very non-transparent grading. The test averages were abysmal. The curve was a lot harsher this quarter, too, probably because projects were worth more than usual (15% as opposed to ~5%).

Overall, 5/10 class. Get through it and you will be a better computer scientist. It's like a light hazing.

This is the most pointless and unreasonably tough courses I have taken at UCLA. You will teach yourself 90% of the material. The projects, with the exception of hw1,hw4, and the project, are all unreasonably difficult and convoluted, and really, nobody knows whats happening and you can bet that tons of students in the course are githubbing most of the hard parts. The exams are written the night before, as stated by the professor, and the averages can wildly vary from 50%-70%. Make sure you read the book and/or review lecture to perform as well as one can on his exams. As usual with eggert you can expect a fat curve at the end but its never consistent so you cant rely on it. FWIW, when I calculated my raw grade with all assignments/exams graded I had a 59.9, and came out with a C .

Honestly people should be pretty prepared for a difficult class whenever it's with Professor Eggert. Projects are time consuming (especially for the second OCaml and the Scheme one). Tests are difficult but something might help for all Eggert tests: they are more about intuitions, so basically whenever you come up with some sort of answer, just write, don't even bother to think too much or too deep about the them. Just let your intuition guide you through would be less confusing and might give better outcomes. Ahhh all that being said I do learn many things in this class and honestly Eggert lectures are good, it's homework and tests that sucks :))

Bad. I don't know what I learned and I don't know what I'm looking at when he's drawing diagrams. The only good parts of lecture is when he shares his personal anecdotes or is funny. If you've already taken 111, workload-wise this class is not as bad; the projects are way shorter than 111. Taking 161 is also helpful because Lisp is similar to the languages you have to pick up in this class.

Pretty much like all the other reviews have already said.

Don't take this class, but obviously you have to take it so take it. You'll get through it fine.

All I gotta say is, it is a goddamn miracle that I passed this class.

That is all.

I'm just an average CS student but this man really had me seriously thinking of changing my major and even dropping out. Good thing I stayed thanks to my other CS professors who actually inspired me to learn.

As is well-known, this class was horrible. Labs almost every week with almost no direction and covering many disparate topics. I had Tameez Latib as my TA, and he was good, but there's only so much you can so when the content and structure of the class is so bad. It's a really great thing that this class was discontinued and replaced by CS 97.

Yes, it's hard, but Eggert is a great lecturer and the content is good. One of the best CS classes here overall