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Professor Smallberg is my god!!!!!

Definitely a great introduction to computer science. Smallberg is an excellent lecture who clearly knows about programming topics and how to explain them well. Most of the projects should not be difficult as long as you follow the lectures. The exams were digital when I took the class so I can't comment much on how they would be during an in-person year.

berg is the best <3

This professor is a mess. Grades were due, and we still did not receive midterm1, midterm2, or the final scores. A lot of students don't even know how they even got their grades since these scores were never given. In addition, professor returned our projects 4 weeks after the TA finished grading. I really don't know why he delays giving our assignments back, but he did it a lot ...

SMALLBERG. This class was easily the toughest I've taken thus far, and really made me miserable but was also the reason I completely switched my major and am on the path to become a software engineer. He will make you suffer, but in the way that makes you feel so proud of yourself in the end and one million time smarter. He makes CS something that anybody can learn, but also makes you your best version of yourself as a student. His sarcastic and slightly angry demeanor(raging about the many common mistakes of past students) is hilarious and enjoyable to watch. Thank you Smallberg, you are one hell of a teacher!

tl;dr: yeah take this class

Doesn't smallberg already have like 69420 reviews lol. Smallberg is fine, he taught well enough that you don't really need to go to discussions. (Most ppl skip discussions).

Tbh if you already took ap cs (and remember it), this class is a breeze and mainly review. There are like 2 midterms and a final if im not mistaken, all of which ask you to write a small piece of code. Timing is decent, although if you havent taken apcs, you might run out of time. If you have, then you could probably finish the tests in like 1/2 of the time. Not really any hwk, just projects assigned every 1 or 2 weeks. Each project takes anywhere from 1 hr to 8 hrs to do, but you have a week to do it so its manageable.

If you're a cs major, youre probably required to take this class anyways so just take it w/ smallberg.
if you're not a cs major, you should still take it if you wanna learn an intro to programming. (although maybe consider cs30 if you have 0 prior experience)

my only concerns is that my TA graded all of our stuff, and lowkey he was kinda picky. But after the first few projects, you know what your TA is looking for so its fine after that.

If youre reading this and this helped you out, pls review ur profs!! itll help us all out uwu

I learned a lot about C++ because of Smallberg. Absolutely legendary in how clear and concise he is. Once I emailed him and his answer was 6 characters long: "FAQ #2". Smallberg's clarity really makes the discussion sections kinda obsolete. Start your projects early. The project specs are pretty clear. In Fall 2020, the tests were just coding and weren't as hard as the coding for the projects, just stay calm. Don't worry about the computer history in the beginning. Would take again.

Professor Smallberg is an excellent lecturer and did a fantastic job running this course online. This quarter, he used a sort of "flipped classroom" approach. Before each lecture session, we listened to a lecture video I believe he recorded last spring on a particular CS 31 topic. During the actual lecture, Professor Smallberg took questions from students regarding the lecture video, helping to clarify any misconceptions and providing additional insights on the lecture material. I really prefer this method, as it's much easier to come up with questions this way.

Grading scheme this quarter:
66 % projects (7 in total)
7% zyBook homework assignments
2% short "responsibility assignments"
5 % midterm 1
8 % midterm 2
12 % final

The projects were a bit time consuming (especially Projects 3 and 5), but were not too difficult. Smallberg's project specs are extremely clear and left me with no lingering questions. I actually spent a lot more time testing my programs and coming up with test cases than the actual coding. Make sure to spend quality time testing your program, especially with the random edge cases (ex: negative or zero array size). This quarter's project averages were extremely high (many of them had a median score of above 95).

The exams this quarter were all open-compiler and consisted mainly of writing code. The midterms were very easy, and the final was a bit harder but not overly difficult. Professor Smallberg takes some time to grade exams (I still haven't received my midterm 2 and final scores yet). Hopefully they will come out soon. Note that the grade I entered for this review is the grade I predict I will get, as final grades haven't come out yet.

Overall, Smallberg's teaching is super clear and thorough and he makes this class very well organized. Definitely would recommend.

Overall: I took AP Computer Science A in high school, so many of the topics weren't new to me, so this class was definitely not hard for me but I can definitely see that it would be more challenging for someone with no prior experience. I took this class online because of COVID, so his lectures were all uploaded beforehand and he spent the actual class time doing Q&A, which I ended up not really going to. His lectures were not super interesting but they are informative and I watched them on 2-4x speed. Overall, Smallberg is very willing to help. I emailed him at midnight one day with a question about my bug, and he answered within 5 minutes with a somewhat passive aggressive but nonetheless helpful answer. He can come off as strict, but he just wants to prepare his students for the future.
Projects: Really weren't too bad; I usually finished them within a day, but start early just in case you run into bugs. Also pay attention to the specific requirements so you don't lose easy points.
Exams: 1 hour, taken online so the exams were all writing code (no code tracing, etc.) which made it pretty easy.