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 :)

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.

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.

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

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

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.