The problem with Hsieh is that he hadn't adapted to online classes, grading homework early on in the quarter liberally, and then cracking down completely in the second half, grading many students unfairly. His notes end up be illegible, as he scribbles all over them to show how data might flow, yet doesn't have any clean notes without the scribbles. My advice would be to avoid him during online quarters.

Great professor :) He cares so much about student struggles, and is on our side. Tests and homeworks were fair, and homeworks were 50% of the grade, so the tests didn't seem so stressful. Take him if you can

grading scheme:

hws (4 of them) - 50%
midterm - 25%
final - 25%

assignments are easy, the professor can't explain concepts well. If you only care about the grade, I would say go for it. If you want to learn anything other than the things already in your textbook, please avoid him.

CS 180 with Cho was a very useful class. Course topics were directly on an internship interview that I aced (binary search go craaaazy). Also helps insanely with Leetcoding. Cho's class is easy, and a little TOO easy at that. There are only 4 homework which aren't bad, which can leave you unprepared for the exams if you aren't good at algo. Honestly, it's an easy class that can be sprinkled on top of a higher loaf quarter. Take this class as early as possible in your CS career, it helps you immensely.

PROF HSIEH is the GOAT

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...

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.

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.

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

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!!!