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

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

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.

I really respect Prof. Tine as a person, he is very nice and he cares about his student's learning that's outside the lecture. However: His lectures are pretty unclear. The worst part is that his slides are extremely hard to understand and can't be used as revision materials. Furthermore, his exams are POORLY worded, questions are very confusing to understand, and he had to make clarifications all the time. Please take this class with someone else.

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.

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...