I took PIC10A with Alexey and decided to take PIC10B with him as well. In 10A, he seems to have a low tolerance for questions. I think he's more tolerant and helpful in 10B because the people in there aren't required to take it and it's more interesting. 10A is a lot of work if you don't know anything about coding, which I did not. It is incredibly useful to make friends in this class. Collaborating on homework is encouraged. The midterm didn't seem tough but the average was 76%. I think Alexey does a good job at setting a solid foundation if you want to take 10B. He's an interesting guy if you ever talk to him outside of class.

If it wasn't for my TA, I probably would have failed this class. The material was pretty difficult for someone new to coding and the lectures were incredibly boring. I went to at most one lecture a week after the midterm but I did my best to never miss a discussion.

The hard part of the class was the homework. He would rarely prepare you for it thoroughly, so I would routinely have to code my programs through trial and error and by using the internet. However, he did extend the deadline for all but two of the homeworks and he dropped two at the end of the quarter (even though it said he would drop only one on the syllabus).

The class was curved about 5 percent or so at the end of the quarter to compensate for a moderately difficult midterm and final.

If you put in the effort to do every assignment and never take the time to go to class or learn any other way then you should be able to pass alright. I never study outside of class and I was fine but again, like I said above, if I didn't have a great TA then things would have been very different. Coding sucks.

Professor Alexey is a good professor, posting this here for PIC10B since I couldn't find anything for 10B under his name. Definitely one of the better professors in the PIC department along with professor Virtanen. The curve for this class is big, about 10%, and the exams are long but not extremely difficult. It's important you focus on the little details with the code during homework and really understand what's going on. C++ isn't an easy language and as the PIC series is for non CS students, it can get overwhelming for us. I put over 20 hours a week into this course in homeworks and about 10 more per day during midterms and finals, but I'm not an amazing programmer. Hopefully you get a good TA, if not, the professors always willing to help and even show you what to do. Only thing is, he really wants you to succeed but he does it in a "come on, you should know this" kind of way. I would take more classes in PIC with Miroshnikov. The grading system is very heavily weighted towards the final exam (50/60 percent), but it's so long that you'll burn-out halfway through the exam, so it gets heavily curved. Do the homeworks and make sure you spend a little more time focusing on data structures and recursion, those are the most difficult.

I learned most of the class material(100%) from one of my CS major friends. I.e. the professor only introduced concepts by obscure and frightening professional CS terms, and never showed any example to assist our understanding. And his homework is unfriendly. It's like he only told us this is chicken, this potato, then please cook those meals at De Neve Dining as homework.

OKAY. So the grade distribution looks very generous and it is. Kinda. I thought it was an easy A with Miroshnikov and I was SO wrong. PIC10A isn’t a joke. Yeah it’s an intro course but technically so is CS32 and we all know that class is AIDS. Alexey does a decent enough job with his slide explanations but its literally just summarizing the book, which is already a summary of the concepts. His homework and projects grow exponentially difficult past Week 3 and it takes hours upon hours to complete and really understand them. Even though I was personally struggling for a good portion of the course, I really really enjoyed learning the material. Lol so many people dropped the class bc the homework and exams were so hard. We started out with 120ish people in the beggining and we had less than 75 still enrolled the day before the final. Not bad too though in retrospect. If this class is a prereq, this professor is your best bet on passing. Had a good curve at the end.

Take this class with Alexey, he’s amazing.

One of the reasons why I chose Miroshnikov for this quarter was due to his high ratings here on BruinWalk, but this quarter, he failed to deliver... like failed hard.

While the course content was definitely not the most difficult thing in the world, it definitely wasn't easy for novice students like me. He stated at the beginning of the class that he assumes that we have no programming experience, and while he does provide information on syntax and basic computer science principles, he definitely gave us a run for our money. On top of that, he can be borderline condescending, which is never fun.

Miroshnikov's lectures were unengaging and unhelpful for a large part of the course. Honestly, the textbook makes more sense than his lectures, and it's hard to find anything right about his teaching style. I was better off reading the textbook rather than listening to him lecture. For a class meant to provide instruction toward one of the biggest industries of our time, computer science, Miroshnikov's teaching methods are primitive at best.

While this class is far from impossible, I would never suggest a student new to programming to take Miroshnikov's class. Do yourself a favor and find another professor.

BTW: I don't know about the reviewers below, but this guy is definitely not funny or entertaining. His sense of humor was basically nonexistent for our lecture.

Okay, I'm going to say it since no one has said anything. If you're a CS major or have had previous experience coding then I am sure this class for you will be easy. But I'm sorry to break it to everyone and let you guys know not everyone was privileged enough to learn how to code in 5th grade! His homework is alright and majority will be easy. The last two are supposed to be "harder". I honestly rarely did the homework because this class did not interest me but sadly it is a pre req. His curve looks pretty generous but I have also heard he has gotten harder as time passes. He doesn't really teach as someone should for an intro course but this man is hilarious and says some pretty hilarious jokes. All in all, I hate programming :) if you like it then you should be fine!

He is damn near a legend and an entertaining, knowledgeable lecturer. C++ is easy to learn until like week six and then it ramps up, so do not get lulled into a false sense of safety by the first couple weeks.