This class need a complete reform. It is not professor Eggert's fault but someone in CS department have to do something with it. Once again, everything in this class is a disaster and need a complete reform. Materials in the syllabus are useful but they are so poorly taught that we would rather study the same thing on our own during summer holiday.

As the last batch of this class, I find it to be my responsibility to pass on the information of this course to the lurkers who wish to find out what this class was and learn more about the prologue of what is now CS 97.
Quite contrary to many of the other reviewers, I... liked this class. As someone who didn't know CS terminologies and tools out of the box, like git, bash, text editors, etc, I find this to bring me up to speed with what a lot of people come into college knowing in CS.
I did the projects 100% on my own, and it was worth it. I learned so much from this course. Yes the topics were split up by week, completely different from the other so it seemed quite disorganized, but as Professor Eggert would put it, this class is to help you learn how to learn. In that respect, this class achieved the objective.
The final was 50% of the grade which sucked but it's a great excuse to make sure that you know your stuff well when you exit the class. Because, well, CS 111 will kick your ass harder if you don't know stuff from this one.
The course was also a stage for Professor Eggert to flex about his Emacs contributions and GNU Linux contributions. You'll see his name on the command line more than you'll ever see it in class (it is TA-led, after all) and half of the answers to the assignment questions had his name popping around somewhere or the other.
Well, I must say that there are two reasons that this class was significantly more mangeable and merrier than previous batches. Primarily, we had an autograder, so we kinda knew our scores on submitting and could ask TAs on and off about which test cases we weren't hitting. Secondly, it was online, so the final exam format was that you have the internet and the servers to your disposal when attempting the exam, and you're kinda expected to use it.

Shoutout to Madhu the TA for being awesome in this quarter.

Well, not like this course will be offered again so, adios. Hope you ace CS 97, or whatever CS class that might be the standard software construction lab in the future.

This class is a pain in the ass, but as long as you don't cheat (i.e., don't look at GitHubs), you'll learn some really important skills for industry. I'm currently doing an internship, and being comfortable with Linux, bash, ssh, and git is really helpful.

The class is TA-led, so how much you struggle depends on who you get. Regardless, prepare to do a lot of Googling and to read a lot of man pages to get through some of your assignments. The assignments take up a lot of time, but Eggert's late policy is very generous, so you're almost never strapped for time.

The final is fairly difficult, but you can bring as many notes as you want. I recommend finding notes from previous students and printing those out. They also give you practice exams and solutions to them, so you will know what to expect on the final.

For reference, I averaged about a 94% on labs and got 67/100 on the final. The average for the final was about 54, and the standard deviation was 14.

Let me be clear, GitHub and StackOverflow are your teachers in this class. That, and the phrase "20+hrs/week" are all you need to know about this class.

I suspect that this course was designed to make people who aren't 100% invested in cs quit the major. Just get this course over with ASAP.

Eggert, as a lecturer, is very enthusiastic and knowledgable. I can tell he is super passionate about computer science and knows a ton. However, the workload and rigor of this class is TOO MUCH. I can barely catch a break while I was in this class. The professor's lectures were all over the place, with no clear direction and random concepts thrown in as a mush. I still do not understand many of the concepts of the class. Eggert's exams were impossible to study for, as he just puts whatever he wants. Overall, I applaud him for being a good lecturer, but the course needs to be organized better.

This class is going to change your life, but not in a good way. CS 35L is basically a lower division capstone project, and takes up so much of your time. DO NOT take other challenging courses in the same quarter unless you're already familiar with Emacs, Git and a few programming languages.

By change your life, I mean that you will change all your schedules to work around Eggert. Your holidays and free time will be spent working on his homework or project. Say goodbye to a normal study schedule as assignments will probably take longer than you need.

I actually liked Eggert's lectures and he covered some interesting concepts (would be a great guest lecturer). However, it is so out of sync with the homework and project that you will find yourself thinking that the class is broken (I did several times). You have to remember that his lectures are more or less independent of the rest of the class. If the assignment involves coding in Python, don't wait for his Python lecture before starting. Use TA notes and your own knowledge to start projects ASAP, as that's the only way to not fall behind.

The group project at the end is about programming a web app from scratch, which is actually pretty fun if you have a good team. You are free to choose whatever idea and technology stack works for you, and there are lots of tutorials available as needed.

Eggert's exams though... if you have a mindset of aiming to get 100%, it's time to let that go. He makes his exams extremely challenging and long, and a lot of it is computer science theory (meaning answers are paragraphs and it almost seems like a philosophy exam). While you will almost definitely be depressed with your exam scores, remember that Eggert wants a bell curve and tries to use it as needed.

Best of luck, you'll need it

Worst class that I've ever taken. The workload is insane especially for the first 6 weeks. It eases up a tad but then they had the worst assignment ever during week 10 (when the final is on the Sunday before finals week) that was so time consuming and hard that half the class didn't even do it. You're expected to learn pretty much a whole language/aspect of cs (bash, python, c, linking, git) and then complete super time consuming hw assignments showing "mastery" of a concept that you just learned. Also, Eggert doesn't teach the class. The TAs do, so if you get a bad TA then you're screwed. The only good thing about this class is the generous late policy. The final exam was terrible and scarring. I never want to take this class again and I never want to take an Eggert exam either. This class needs to be reworked. The workload can be cut in half easily especially for a 3 unit class. I made the mistake of taking this at the same time as CS 33 and the workload was insane. Worst quarter at ucla so far. I have no clue how I scraped out with a B but I don't want to think about this class anymore.

Exams are more of creative writing questions rather than coding questions. One example question would be like "If you were to redesign system A on top of framework B, what's the pros and cons", at which point you can only freestyle write if you don't have the pros and cons of each system in your notes. Midterm had a mean and median around 63/100, final had a mean and median around 70/100, and yet still no curves on the final grades. I got 1 point above the average for midterm and about 82/100 for the final and got a B+. The whole class is appalled that no curves were given to such a low grade distribution. One TA said that past GPA distribution is around 2.7 for this class. It's pretty accurate. Don't be misled by the beautiful grade distribution of 2020 spring on Bruinwalk

Beware of this class! 35L drained so much of my time, so make sure to schedule your quarter appropriately. As others have stated, there needs to be some restructuring.
This class had 2 lab sections per week, with a lab assignment due at the beginning of each week. Attendance for these sections is not mandatory, and usefulness depends on ur TA. Labs 2, 4, 5, and 9 were especially time consuming for me, and all the other labs were still either difficult or annoying af. I turned in most of the labs late, so my lab average was about an 82. I did feel like I learned a lot from trying to do the labs, but this did not help at all for the final lmao. I pulled up with textbooks and hundreds of pages of notes and scored around the median (52), which got me a B. The final was 17 PAGES of the hardest shit ever. Each of the 10 questions were weighted equally and had to do with one of the labs. I straight up left a question blank after reading the directions lool and totally guessed on the multiple choice. There were basically no free points at all, so good luck on that lmao. 3 units does not correspond at all to the necessary workload of this course, and after hours and hours of work I escaped with a B. This class also takes hella time away from all your other courses, so be ready for that