Like many of the other recent reviewers, I did not attend any of the lectures past week 2. He speaks quite slowly in real-time but at 1.5 speed, the lecture is the perfect pace. So it is truly a shame that he will likely stop BruinCasting his lectures.

There were 10 quizzes which counted for 1 percent of the final grade each. The quizzes varied in difficulty with some being pretty easy points, and others being difficult enough to require some random guesses. Each person has the exact same quiz questions though, so if you are taking the class with a friend you can plan accordingly.

The 6 homework assignments counted for 18 percent of the final grade. They also varied in difficulty, and got significantly harder as the quarter went on. However, if you gave an honest effort you will get most of the points for the question. And if you are willing to go to the professor's office hours, he is very helpful and willing to give hints. Even if you can't make it to office hours he is very responsive on piazza. Plus a decent amount of the answers are on the Internet if you truly get stuck.

There were 3 tests which were noncumulative. The first midterm was a piece of cake. Many of the questions were straight out of the past quarter's tests. The second midterm and final were much harder and used fewer questions from past quarter tests. However, I would still recommend reviewing the previous quarter's questions and really understanding the homework solutions he gives.

Overall, not a bad class. He is a good professor who tries his best to make sure he is giving material at a reasonable pace and with good clarity.

Although he has an accent, he is very very clear and understandable. In addition, his lecture notes are very helpful and clear so I understand most of the proofs. Of course I probably couldn't create the proof out of thin air but at the least I understand what he's doing. His tests are easy which means it is a good thing (easy) and bad thing (high averages). So if you understand the fundamentals of this class, you should do well on the exams. This is my favorite class in CS so far.

While the professor was very active on Piazza, which was nice, I don't really feel like this is a class worth taking if you want to actually learn something, as we covered less material than other CS 180 classes have. The professor pretty much just regurgitates chunks of the textbook but in a confusing way. The quizzes were quite annoying; each timed quiz was worth 1% of your grade and there were 10 total, so forget a quiz or mess up on one and you'll be saying goodbye to those points (I said goodbye to quite a lot of those quiz points). I found that the exam structure was also a bit unforgiving; I was really sick during the time of the second exam and ended up doing extremely badly on it, which ultimately ended with me earning my first C.

The biggest problem with this class, though, was the cheating. The high homework and quiz scores were not due to the fact that the students were especially smart, but due to the fact that the students were especially inclined towards cheating. I saw and heard people pass around homework answers; I was even offered some at some point when I asked for help. To prevent cheating, at least a little bit, the professor should use different homework problems each time he teaches the class or something so that people can't just look up the solutions on Chegg.

Overall, I wish I had taken this class with a different professor, because I don't think I learned much at all, and all that this class left me with was a bitter taste in my mouth. To put things in perspective, I would rather take EE M16 with Mehta again than this class.

Homeworks were hard and it can be a lot of work with weekly quizzes. Midterms were easy which meant that it was difficult to get a good grade due to the ridiculous curves. Meka however was a good teacher and really cared about students learning. I did really like this class even if I didn't do well.

Excellent class and excellent professor.

Prof Meka adapted well to teaching in a covid remote learning environment, his live zoom lectures were generally well prepared and engaging. Exams and homeworks were challenging but fair, and the questions generally posed on them were interesting.

Overall I can say I learned a lot this quarter from him and recommend him and this class.

This is one of my absolute favorite classes I’ve taken at my time here at UCLA. Don’t get me wrong - the material is very, very hard and I’m a very, very below-average student. But Meka teaches in a way that is very well-structured and thorough. Being remote this quarter was a challenge for all my professors, but he provided very clear (if a bit hard to read) notes, reasonable homework and tests, and very well-written and fast answers on campuswire.

This is such a great class. Contrary to the official course title, the main focus of the class is not finite automata. Meka has revised the curriculum to talk about "theory of computation" as a whole, and some of the ideas/ theorems we discussed were honestly mindblowing. The textbook is very modern and completely free online.

There are two midterms and a final. I personally found the exams to get progressively more difficult, although that's probably due to the nature of the material. Overall, they are fair. Make sure to study the class notes, as there are always a few questions that basically require you to recite key ideas. One final note: the exams are timed over Zoom, so I imagine they would be similar to in-person

Great professor, hard exams but extremely generous grading scheme. Would take him again.

This is by far the worst professor and class I have had at UCLA. Meka may seem like a nice guy on the surface but he does not by any means prioritize student's best interests in his classes. He believes that his class is the most important thing in your life and that he is upholding a high academic reputation for his class by being a d**k about grades. A classic example is one time the TA lost a students hw assignment, he gave the scores out on a Friday before a final, and when the student complained about the 0 on Saturday and asked for a regrade he told him no because he deemed it too close to the final exam.

HW assignments are graded extremely harshly. You will spend hours doing them and then get destroyed during the grading. If you try to reason with Meka and complain about your grade, he will not help you out.

Bottom line is that if you dislike yourself and would like to make your algorithms experience as terrible as possible, go ahead and take Meka. I actually hated this class more than 111 with Eggert, which is really saying something.

Super interesting class, Meka is a great lecturer and really good about answering questions. The homeworks are pretty difficult and are mostly graded on completion, but definitely manageable. We had two midterms and one final, all non-cumulative. He's pretty lenient on grading for these-- I basically skipped a question and still got one point for "attempting" it. Overall, would definitely recommend taking this class with Prof. Meka.