Prof Meka is a legend. Dude is super passionate about Theoretical Computer Science, and does a fantastic job of channeling that passion every lecture. Theoretical CS is kind of an oddity among the rest of the CS classes, so the material can be difficult to grasp at times. However, Meka goes slowly and methodically, and makes it much easier on the class.

Homeworks were easy for the first half of the quarter and got kinda obscure towards the end, but overall not super time consuming. He uses a 3 midterm approach, with each midterm considerably more difficult than the last. I know everybody wants this class with Sherstov but I have no regrets taking it with Meka.

One time I asked a question after class and the next class he brought up my question to the whole class, saying that it was a good question and sharing the answer with the entire class. I'm still living on that high. Anyways, Prof Meka is great and presented the material of this class very well. His explanations are very clear and he welcomes student questions. Definitely take this class if you are even slightly interested in the more theoretical side of CS!

Professor Meka was one of the BEST professors I have had in the CS department! I think he did a great job teaching this class remotely. The course structure was changed this quarter and was more about "Theoretical Computer Science" than what it was before. The content was always very interesting and often times mind blowing, especially near the end of the quarter when we covered uncomputability, TM, and proved Godel's Incompleteness Theorem!! Coming into this course, I had no idea what TCS is about and even though I am not that interested in the field, I still find the class very interesting.

This class is full of proofs and you won't write a single line of actual code (aside from pseudo-code). Proofs are difficult, but with Professor Meka's great explanations, it becomes somewhat manageable. All the HW are proof-style questions that re-empahsizes concepts taught in class. About half of the questions will be somewhat doable if you attended lecture, but there will always be VERY HARD questions on the HW that I couldn't figure out on my own even if I were to stare at the question the whole day. Even so, the TAs were extremely helpful!! They would often give hints to difficult HW questions during discussion and if you need more help, you could always go to OH where they go over the HW questions in detail until you understand them. S/o to TA Hadley and Shawn!

There were 3 non-cumulative exams throughout the quarter (including the final). The exams were increasing more difficult and I would say that the final was really hard (but still doable imo). Even though, I only did well on the first exam, and scored about average on the latter two exams, I was still able to get an A. I think there is a nice curve.

Compare to my friends who took it in previous quarters with the old course structure, I would say this class is definitely **harder than before**, but you will definitely learn A LOT more than ppl in previous quarters did. So, I 100% recommend taking this class with Meka!! You will have a great time and learn a lot :)

Meka has made the course workload and exam difficulty very reasonable since he last taught it in 2015. Textbook is not needed, just focus on lecture slides which are posted online, and homework sets. Sometimes in lectures Professor Meka goes over complex proofs (such as runtime of Quicksort/Quickselect) but he generally does not give exam questions on these.

Meka went through most of the topics on his iPad and Apple Pencil, which basically is an advanced white board. He will post the transcripts immediately after the class. In general the course is very well organized. There are 3 exams (including the final), which are all roughly equally weighted and are not accumulative. Really necessary to point out that a lot of the comments on Bruinwalks are not fair at all. He is a great professor if you want to take 180 with him.

Meka is organized and nice, but he assumed we knew a lot more coming into the class than we actually did. He would present topics without a lot of lead-up, so you'd be suddenly looking at things like advanced probability without having taken any statistics classes (and even the people who had taken those classes said that they'd never seen before the material Meka was presenting).
Classes are all about new material, but there wasn't a very cohesive chain of applicability for all the different topics, so it made it hard to absorb the info; it just seemed like a big bag of difficult, seemingly disjointed material.
Meka's a nice guy, but he tended to not tell you how to do things for fear of "giving away the answer". Consequently, any methods you developed to solve any questions was of your own doing.
If Sean is still TAing, he's a big help.
Overall, I feel like the class was unnecessarily hard and you didn't leave feeling like you had new tools in your coding arsenal; you just left feeling glad that it was all over.

If you are in this class, here are some things that can help:
He sticks fairly close to the book, so if you can read the chapters before lecture, you’ll be ready to hear his advanced versions of the material.
The homeworks were ridiculously hard, but once you have the answers (TA help…), really understand how you got there, because his exam questions are often just versions of those HW questions (and/or versions of some proof he did in class).
He really expected us to reference algorithms/proofs he did in lecture. If you can remember all those, you only need to add “blah blah algorithm/proof, as shown in lecture” much of the time for full points. In fact, NOT referencing one of those can often wipe points off your HW/exam even though you did everything else right.

Overall, the HW grading was up and down (high average for the class on one assignment, then an inexplicably, drastically low average on the next) and we often weren’t sure what constituted a “correct answer” because the instructions were vague, yet the grading was very specific, like a N Campus class looking for you to mention key words to match the grading rubric.

Like I said, perhaps his teaching methods will change and he did grade fairly with the final grades, but I would recommend someone else if you want to really “get” algorithms.

Meka's class is much easier than the other options for CS180. He writes out the content of the lecture by hand but on an Ipad that he projects. He draws pictures and even uses colors!! It's very awesome for people who learn better with pictures :) Also all of his lectures are recorded and available on CCLE so you can rewatch the videos to prepare for the weekly quizzes/hw/exams.

His HW is pretty easy as long as you understand the lectures. If you understand the lectures, you will do well on the tests - you don't really need to think outside of the box. Downside is the class averages on the tests are like 89% and he gives 30% As, 30% Bs, etc.

This class reminds me of a high school class, where you could kind of just memorize what you learned in class and get 100% on the test from that alone. The good ol days ...

Professor Meka was an excellent professor. In this quarter we had BruinCast, as another reviewer mentioned, but Professor Meka noted that he didn't like the drop in attendance so if you take the class with him I wouldn't count on it being BruinCasted in the future.

Even without BruinCast though, I highly, highly recommend Professor Meka for teaching CS 180. He was extremely clear, very good at teaching the material, and always stopped to answer questions. Additionally, the homework he gave was suitably challenging in relation to the tests, so that if you did the homework and the additional practice he gave you, along with reviewing quizzes and your notes, you can get above average on the tests.

However, note that the course gets considerably more difficult as the quarter goes on (it still isn't bad by any means, it's just that up to the first mid-term is actually quite easy). Make sure to more closely go over notes, quizzes, and do extra practice problems for the last two-thirds of the course.

Also, the average on the first midterm was slightly above a 90%, while the second midterm average was around a low 80-high 70s average. I suspect the final will have a similar distribution as the second midterm. He gives 30% As, 30% Bs, 35% Cs and 5% Ds and Fs. Fairly standard distribution, just try to beat the curve.

Mid-terms are also non-cumulative, which is really nice for a CS course. I highly recommend Professor Meka to anyone who wants to take him for CS 180.

although pretty willing to receive feedback, i found his teaching style incompatible with me. i really felt like i wasted my time in this class. i dont know why we spent so much time on basic things like divide and conquer, bfs/dfs, etc. i felt like there was so little depth to the class and the proofs were extremely bullshitty. he did randomized algorithms instead of network algs my quarter, which i thought was kinda cool tho.
oh, his handwriting is not good. also his sense of organization for his handwritten notes is straight trash. i literally cannot understand what the guy is trying to convey. also, lecture is extremely slow and boring. although it was bruincasted this quarter, i think he said he won't be bruincasting it in the future :(
overall, i thought this class was a waste of time because i didnt really learn anything except some vague stuff on NP and randomized algorithms. everything else i already learned from leetcode.
oh, but yeh the tests are noncumulative and he answers all questions on piazza + lecture (literally every single one) which is really helpful imo.

Get ready to write rigorous proofs. Curve as follows: ~ 10%A+,10%A, 10%A-, 10%B+, .... 10%C, 10-20%C- and below.

Lectures podcasted, but he said he didn't like how it caused a drop in attendance so he ain't doing it in the future. Good thing I took it when he did because the lectures are so slow, I ended up never showing up again after the 2nd week and playing them back at 2x speed instead.
Great lectures if on 2x speed though, really engaging, interesting, and informative.

If you are a math major btw , and have taken 131a and 115a and have done well in those 2 classes, the proofs in this class will just come naturally. They are very ez compared to the stuff in those 2.

QUIZZES: 10 quizzes 1 per week, each worth 1% of grade. These sucked (they were NOT free points), stressed me tf out, but made me learn the material in a decent pace instead of putting everything off till the night before the exam like I do for literally every other class.

HW: Yeah he writes his own problems. Some were actually pretty darn hard, most of the time they were ok though. 6x 3% each.

EXAMS: We had 3 noncumulative exams, the third being our final. 1st one worth 22% of our grade, 2nd and 3rd both worth 25. The first test was a joke, so he made the next two considerably harder. Partial credit is very generous, although you need to realize this doesn't mean anything since the class is curved strictly anyways. Tests consist of multiple short answer questions, and then 4 algorithm design questions. First part similar to quizzes, 2nd part similar to homeworks. Since I did every hw legit instead of copying off chegg/google I actually did really well on the exams just off of that with very minimal extra studying besides reviewing quiz answers I got wrong.