A very well-intentioned dude, but exams were TOUGH.

i mostly agree with what everyone else said. lectures + textbook were more than enough to cover everything u need for exams. lectures are so-so but usually good enough. textbook was very useful. exams were TOUGH. i spent 20 hours on a 24 hour midterm and 13 on a 24 hour final. LIKE WITHOUT PROCRASTINATING OR ANYTHING. exams required a lot of creative approaches, but TAs were very nice with grading HWs 1,2,3, midterm. Final and hw4 grading were rough but not unreasonable (actually idk abt this tbh lol u could argue that grading was sorta mean)
homework took maybe 14 hours each, but theres only 4 hw assignments so its managable.
grading:
(40%) Homeworks: we plan to have 4 homework assignments. (30%) Midterm exam
(30%) Final exam

10/10 would recommend taking this class with professor Hseih. Yes, it's somewhat difficult to understand what he's saying early on, and yes his notes are little disorganized. But, he really understands the material and just by going through his lectures and the examples that he gives, you can get an in-depth understanding of the concepts.

The workload is super manageable, with just 4 homeworks (30%), midterm (30%) and a final (40%). The final was a little tricky (but that's also because tricky concepts like DP are introduced later on in the class). But just do well on the midterm and do the hws properly - they're easy to score on and leniently graded. So that leaves you comfortable for this final.

The curve was also quite generous, with a 7% flat scale. So, an 86+ becomes an A, 83+ is A- and so on...

Watching Hsieh stops talking for a whole minute and reading questions in the chat 20+ times in one lecture is torturing. I'm learning by book because of this and his accent. HWs and exams usually have 4 problems, 3 do-able but 1 hardcore. I found some of the problems on leetcode as hard. Nevertheless, the curve is generous. The class averaged 59 in final and he add 3-5 points to everyone's total grades. I get from B+ to just over A.

So before the course evaluations are due, you will be graded extremely leniently; and that will be HW 1-3 plus the midterm. After that, with the final (our median = 58) and HW 4, you will be crushed. Some of the problems on those were in the area of research, and this class will not prepare you for them well enough. The teacher can't teach and is impossible to follow. I am starting to think that this department cannot teach at all (maybe that makes sense considering who is the head of the department). The grading was just abysmal (and I truly believe that was by design): inconsistent, extremely delayed, no feedback...
Overall, this is just an utter embarrassment of a class!
If you have to take this section, make use of the book, YouTube, and such.
Otherwise, AVOID!!!

This class can be tough. The problem sets usually aren't all too bad - they mainly are just slight modifications on problems presented in lecture. The real problem with this class is the difficulty of the midterm/final. They were 24 hrs and take home, however they took the entire 24 hours to complete, and almost all the problems required very novel ideas, albeit using some basic concepts covered in lecture. All in all, an important class to take and algorithms are supposed to be tough, however I wish they could have been presented in a more engaging way and that the exams would contain the questions based on lectures while the problem sets would give us time to explore developing novel ideas to solve problems.

Even though the class was hard, I do think it was taught in a fair manner. The homework was not easy but not impossible and I think everything in the class was well structured. He gives many examples and always answers questions no matter how long it will take. He was very considerate given the COVID situation and was the TA's were also very on top of commenting on Piazza.

Overall, the class concepts and algorithms taught are definitely useful and can aid you a lot with future coding interviews. However, the class was just poorly structured as personally I was doing well on all assignments until the final exam. There were also many student compilations with the final regrade requests with solutions not being able to get credit, and grading where perhaps > 90% students got no credit before regrades. The class is definitely useful and Cho is clear at explaining algorithms.

The concepts in this class were hard but Professor Hsieh did his best to teach them and was never impatient when students asked multiple questions (sometimes repetitive ones). He is also very nice and extremely considerate for this special quarter. Whenever a student asks a question he also never fails to respond and say "thank you" afterwards which I thought was really cute haha. Not only did he immediately say it shouldn't be a problem to make our finals optional if you pass/no pass but he also extended the final from 24 hours to 72 hours to accommodate more students. There were only 4 homeworks for the entire quarter and although some of the questions were challenging they were doable. If you go to the TA's and Professor's OH they are more than willing to help you with it! Shoutout to Hadley Black for also being an awesome TA :))

Professor Cho had to teach a very difficult class in a tough situation this quarter and I think he honestly did better than almost every other CS180 teacher besides maybe one or two of them. The concepts of the class are very difficult in general but I think he did a good job of trying to teach each concept while providing further resources in the textbook. He gave us reasonable time to do each homework and complete both the midterm and finals. Even though the final was a lot harder I think that was in part due to the concepts on the final since it wasn't cumulative. I don't think the people complaining about him this quarter have ever taken the class with one of the other professors who are much worse. He is a super nice guy and always takes time to answer questions in class and overall I enjoyed my experience much more this quarter than with other professors.

Professor Hseih is very nice and accommodating for students (during the COVID-19). He offered 24-hour midterm and 72-hour final. There were total of four homework assignments due which took some time, but most of it was Googleable. He often gave out extensions for the homework deadlines.
The midterm was pretty easy (median of 96~98 I believe) but the final was very tough. It actually took at least two days to complete and the median ended up being around 83. Both exams were open note.
Although Professor Hseih teaches by the book, he does not have a neat handwriting, so it's often pretty difficult to decipher his handwriting. I think he would've taught a lot better if he was in person. For more difficult topics like DP, NP, and DAC, I usually resorted the textbook (which was also kind of confusing) and a lot of YouTube videos.