Please take M151B with anyone else. Tine is reasonably nice but that's about where the positives end for this class. Midterm was online, in person (you take it on your laptop) and people definitely cheated. Despite that the average was low because no one understands the questions Tine writes! The TAs pushed for paper exams and checking IDs but that did not happen (we get paper exams for the final, which I have not taken yet). Attendance is mandatory via code but less than half the class shows up. Most of the lectures were recorded but sometimes they are not, and the slides are not that helpful since he does a lot of writing on the IPad whiteboard. The projects either take you 4 hours or 15 hours depending on if you are able to infer what the spec is asking exactly. Oftentimes Tine would get confused by his own lecture content which did not help. The homeworks are worded poorly and on about half of them the correct answer was not what the bruinlearn rubric listed and would have to be regraded later. The class material and homework understanding was only possible thanks to a TA, Jack. (Thank you Jack!) Unfun class that has reasonably low workload, but you mostly have no idea what's going on, especially on homeworks on exams.

Edit: lol took the final that shit was so ass fuck you Tine

As of writing, Blase Tine has a 4.0 with 3 reviews, truthfully, I have no idea why.
Heres the good: Assignments are done in partners which you pick, they're generally easy C++ assignments, but make sure you take multiple days to do them, I'd estimate every project to be like 30% coding, 70% debugging *very* little things. Though generally, you can expect full score on the assignments/projects.
Homeworks are given in weekly quizzes that aren't too difficult? Though this varies depending on the TA that helps during discussion sections.

Heres the bad:
Don't expect to rely on the lecture recordings, half of the 19 lectures this quarter were either muted, or just non-existent.
As a 4th year undergrad, this course's exams might genuinely be some of the worst exams I've ever taken. Our midterm was done on laptops in class (though you literally could have done it at home, nobody would have noticed at all), and I am quite confident there were many people actively cheating driving the average grade higher than it should have been. Our final was on paper, and... wow.
To go into specifics, the lecture and homework content felt *extremely* different from content on the final exam. The professor said it was to test our 'understanding' rather than memorization. Which.. I guess? I literally read the entire textbook even the parts you don't need to, did each homework three times, all suggested discussion practice problems, wrote the formulas, brought them to the final, and they were all basically useless. I don't even know why I read the textbook anymore. I caught multiple people outright weeping during the final, which does at least make my horrible score (not yet graded) feel at least a little bit better.
Please. Find someone else. The exams are absolutely ruthless, and you're basically playing coinflip on the curve for your GPA. If you're not into masochism then don't take this course.
(Also to those who didn't like Operating Systems [CS111], this class is basically OS 2 electric boogaloo)

Oh nah what final exam did I take that left me speechless the moment I opened the final!! Shit up to the final was fine then bro gives us a final that we never got practice problems for :sob:

Honestly probably the worst professor I’ve had as a CS junior. All around very unhelpful and frustrating and unprofessional. Most of the time he didn’t even know what he was talking about and would give out wrong information. I went to his office hours and he told me for the final I could bring unlimited notes and then when I show up for the final he suddenly changes the policy to one cheat sheet. ALSO DOESNT RESPOND TO EMAIL AT ALL!!!! (even during emergencies). I literally had to contact the Dean of CS and engineering and yet he STILL wouldn’t reply to my emails. Also tests are rediculously difficult with averages around ~50-60% and yet he didn’t even curve the midterm. And for the final he said he would give everyone a 2 point score addition to their score (~10% when the average was a 50% btw) and yet he didn’t even curve the final properly lol. Instead of raising our score he just reduced the amount of points the exam was worth. Imagine being a PhD CS prof and not knowing how to curve an exam. Honestly embarrassing. Avoid this prof at all costs.

If you have the option take this class with anyone else. The only redeemable quality this class has is the workload is blindingly easy(this is a problem for later). The Prof is quite nice, and if you go to office hours with him he genuinely cares about trying to make you understand the material. That's where the positives end. The homeworks are usually 8 question canvas quizzes, that are blindingly easy. (Expect for half of the questions were poorly worded misleading you to choose the incorrect answer, also the answers were often incorrect and required the TA's to go back and change them again). The projects (3 of them), are not that long. They require about 30% coding and 70% debugging, so it will take you several hours/days just to figure out what is wrong with your program, and why it won't pass the autograder. Project 2 has extra credit opportunity for 2 points(2 percent basically more on this later). But I do feel like they incorporate what we are learning during lecture well. The midterm was online, (in person), and people probably cheated. Even with that, the average was 65%(before regrades) and 67%(after regrades). This comes to the final.. It was the worst final I have ever taken, while at UCLA. The disconnect between lectures and exam was crazy. With no real practice even with doing all of the homeworks again, and discussion questions. I was looking at the exam going what is this even talking about. I was not the only one, as everyone around me looked very confused, and some people were literally crying. However I had comfort knowing that the class would be curved and that everyone would be in the same boat as me. Coming back to the curve.. The final average was 50% so the "curve", was a 2 point increase for everyone in the final. But the issue is, instead of adding 2 points to whatever score you got i.e 10 pt raw curved would be 12 pt out of 20. It was simply made out of 18. The issue is, you now did barley any better this way. I.e it was only a 5% curve really. (And this was the ONLY curve of the class). Also the 2 points of extra credit that you spend many hours on for project 2, weren't really extra credit and simply got absorbed into the overall grade. Not boosting your grade much either. This is a big problem, especially considering that the averages on both the midterm and final were so low. This being said the midterm and final collectively were 40% of the overall grade. With 35% being projects and 5% being homeworks. This is the only way that you could have done well in this class.

I did decent on the midterm scoring a 16.5/20 a couple standard deviations above the average. And I got a 14.5 / 18, also a couple standard deviations above the average. And I had a 95% as my final grade. So this is really a gpa killer if your not lucky..

Overall, take it with someone else trust me. Unless you want to have the lightest workload class of 151/116 possible, but then getting completely screwed on exams.

Shoutout to the TA's though, they seriously tried their best to make it work, but the way the class is currently structured is not correct IMO.

me when I need to calculate CPU time for the 6th time in a row

Overall, Tine was very nice as an instructor, but let's just say that his exams were brutal. I don't know what the EFF I was taking when I took the final; that's all I can say.

Tine is a new prof (as of time of writing) and his class def has some parts that could use polishing, but I overall like the class.

Pros
- Homework relatively easy, mostly multiple choice quizzes
- I like the focus on RISC-V instead of CISC architectures
- Discusses practical things and macroscopic architecture trends in class instead of just theory
- Fairly interactive and engaging
- Exams were easy - BruinLearn quizzes, administered in person (you use your own laptop)

Cons
- Project was janky. Your code doesn't actually implement a CPU; for some parts you're only implementing the out of order scheduler timings to print things in the right order
- Exams were messy; prof had to constantly make clarifications

got baited by the one good review from winter 2024....

professor seems like funny and chill guy but as a professor he is not it. beyond confusing, convolutes even the most simple topics, often times he will teach us the wrong thing to correct himself later. for a class that already has difficult content, a professor that doesn't get mixed up often and confuse us further would be helpful. even when he is talking, it's so unclear: his drawings are just messy and he doesn't clearly refer to things as he is talking about them.

the homework were tricky, projects were alright with a partner, the final was abysmal with literally no questions on the discussions, homework, or in the lectures that we had any practice with. literally the first time seeing that content and it was on the final.

no amount of studying can prepare you for that...

This professor has no sympathy for students who are struggling in class.
His lectures are the worst lectures I have ever had as a junior at ucla.
Get ready to self-study for everything if you are to take his class.