Pros: Korf has been teaching for 35 years here and explains the concepts really clearly. He's fun in teaching and super helpful. He replies to questions on discord immediately. Grading only contains 9 HWs, no pressure for exams.

Cons: Korf's teaching is by giving out rhetorical questions and waiting for the one correct answer as the concept he wants to cover. This often takes too long. HWs are too complicated and time-consuming, asking you to design a vending machine or a calculator from scratch. They usually take me 10-hrs and 12-pages to finish, and gotta do this weekly. W8 HW on the other lec is the same as the one we did in H3, unbelivable.

lecture: mostly participation based. obviously you don't have to participate, but it definitely improves your knowledge and understanding for the homework

discussion: optional, mostly reviews lecture material

exams: since this quarter was online, there were no exams.

homework: your grade is basically based on homework. this can be a blessing or curse, since messing up one homework can put your grade at risk. however, they are all definitely doable and the TAs are always willing to help.

rich was the goat. he's probably one of the best lecturers in the cs department; the lectures were interesting and engaging. the lectures were also built from the ground-up, meaning you have the foundational knowledge for everything you learn. since the class is taught in such a cumulative fashion, it's also important to understand everything as you learn. you know rich teaches well, since it feels like the course curriculum was written by him. if you take this class and there are no exams, just beware of the homework, since that is your entire grade. also, this class pairs pretty nicely with cs33, so would recommend taking together if you have the chance. overall, amazing professor, definitely recommend for everyone.

Look no further, the absolute best CS class you'll ever take at UCLA is here. If you have the chance to be blessed with Rich's wisdom, you must take it without a second thought. This class is what we pay our overpriced tuition for. it truly embodies everything right about a college class.

I came into class with no clue what the course was even going to be about, but it grew to become my favorite almost immediately. Professor Korf is so funny and is an incredibly clear teacher, even over Zoom. With another professor's M51A class I feel like I would have gotten bored and stopped paying attention, but Rich is extremely engaging, tells funny jokes and hilarious stories, and just has a knack for teaching that I can't quite explain in words. It's something that is only equaled by Carey's CS 32, as both classes just made you feel like you were almost listening to stories as opposed to a lot of boring classes where lecture is purely about scribbling down all the notes as fast as possible.

The assignments in this class are also really helpful, and in our quarter our grade was 100% assignment-based. It was really cool to see how things build on top of each other – for example in the second assignment we do k-maps and later on in the class, we have assignments where we do k-maps again, except by then you realize that you've gotten so much more familiar with doing them that it takes 10x less time than when you did them for Assignment 2. Since the entire class is cumulative, it's important to not fall behind, which is something that Korf says every lecture too.

I thought the contents of the class were going to be super dry, and in a way they are kind of dry if you have zero interest in the low-level stuff. Personally I'm not super interested in low-level stuff, but this course really helped me appreciate how simple everything boils down to. Stuff like memory which seemed to me like it would be impossible to understand turns out to be built through just combining some really simple building block elements. The class kind of felt like learning how to build one awesome Lego machine, where every lecture you add some more pieces to the puzzle and at the end you combine them all together to build a functioning computer, which is super cool to me even though it's not something I'm super interested in.

A few things to note though. The no exam format was just because of the remote learning, so if you're taking this class in person in the future it's probably not going to be that way. Having said that, the assignments should remain the same, and they really helped you learn the material so hopefully the exams won't be too insane to tackle. Also make sure to ask him for stories, he's always got good ones to tell. Enjoy!!

Terrorist. Homeworks took forever, lectures were not clear. Save your time, take Abari if you can.

Pros:
Korf goes extremely in-depth about the material while being very careful to keep things understandable. He's also fairly funny and a nice person. He covered a lot more material than the other professors based on talking to other students, which I believe will be useful for other classes. I came out of this class feeling like I could make a redstone computer from scratch.

Cons:
This class was entirely homework based (which to most is a pro), but the homework tended to be open-ended design problems that had somewhat vague specs.

Unfortunately, if your design did not match the solution exactly, you would likely lose some points, even if your design worked, based on some criteria that was not mentioned in the spec. Overall, I felt frustrated for parts of the grading.
Some examples of things I've been docked for:
- Rounding a number which I explicitly asked my TA if I could round (my TA was not the one that graded it)
- Not abstracting some components into a larger component before using it (which was never mentioned in the spec, but was mentioned as something that COULD be done if we wanted to in the class Discord (see below))
- My design had the "Correct circuit, but ... isn't as scalable as the posted solution"

Also, Korf joined the class Discord which was helpful, but also annoying because homework clarifications/corrections would sometimes be posted somewhere up the homework channel which was easy to miss. He would sometimes change his mind about whether something was allowed on the homework, so monitoring the chat was important.

Additionally, Korf reused the homework from previous quarters and I know that some people cheated, which was annoying because the class was curved and homework was our entire grade. Not really his fault, because I do understand that coming up with unique problems for the type of problems he was designing could be difficult, but frustrating nonetheless.

HANDS DOWN BEST CS PROF AND BEST REMOTE CLASS AT UCLA. no exams because of cheating, so grades were based on 10 hw assignments. earlier hw was a little time consuming, but the TAs (s/o to ananya and sicheng) were super helpful. korf does a really good job adapting to the online format, and his lectures made the (somewhat dry) subject material interesting and easy to understand. hes also really nice, lots of dad jokes lol.

Of my classes fall quarter, CS M51A with Korf was my favorite. His explanations of material were always completely clear and engaging. I did not go into this class too interested in lower level components of computers, but that's honestly changed after taking this class. Korf also clearly cares about his students. For this quarter all of our grade was 100% based off of assignments, we did not have any exams. Now this is probably (hopefully) a one time thing for online, but Korf is still going to have the same attitude once class is back in person. I would highly recommend taking M51A with Korf.

PROS:
- Professor Korf is the GOAT. His lectures are usually pretty clear and straightforward. He would also sprinkle in some jokes during lectures to keep it engaging.
- The topics covered are very interesting. You start with basics like truth tables and work your way up to circuit design.
- Homework assignments were challenging, but actually really fun to do. You usually draw circuit diagrams for components we discussed in class, but with some added twist (like learning how to build an adder in class, then building a multiplier for homework). They usually take an entire afternoon for me to do (sometimes even longer)
- I had Sicheng as my TA and he is amazing as well. His slides were super helpful for the homework.
- No exams! (Although this will probably change when we go to in-person classes)

CONS:
- Since we had no exams, the homework constituted 100% of our grade. (so each homework is worth ~10% of the grade).
- No curve
- It is super important that you don't fall behind since everything builds on previous lectures.

OVERALL: This was such a fun class and I would definitely recommend taking this class with Professor Korf 100%. You can tell that he really cares about each student because he would stop lectures to make sure that the concepts discussed already are "crystal clear," as he would say. Each lecture builds on the previous lectures, so it is very important to get a good understanding of each concept. Of course, if you are taking it when COVID is over, you'll probably have a different experience, but overall this was still an amazing class with an amazing professor.

Amazing lecturer even virtually!! He really encourages participation during lecture but it’s not mandatory. Korf really cares about his students and made sure we understood a concept before moving on. The homework assignments were surprisingly fun and challenging at the same time. I would really recommend taking this class virtually or in person because Korf is a funny guy and a great professor.

Professor Korf is definitely among the top five professors at UCLA. His lectures are engaging, funny, and informative and he always makes sure that everyone understands the material. Definitely take his class if you can, you certainly won't regret it.

Edit: for those wondering how this class worked with remote instruction, there were no exams--just nine homework assignments, all weighted equally and very much doable as long as you go to class/watch the recording and start early.