Smallberg is a good lecturer for intro CS courses. He has a very clear thought process, rarely makes mistakes, and makes pretty good analogies to help us understand. He’s taught this many many times so it comes very naturally to him. The course itself is not hard if you’ve taken AP Com Sci. Exams are fair — one cheat sheet per midterm and two cheat sheets for final.

I genuinely enjoyed his lectures throughout the quarter. Like most other reviews, he did a great job covering the material with great depth. He makes the effort to make sure we understood the underlying principles of what we were learning, instead of just understanding the basics. I had taken AP Computer Science A in high school and generally felt comfortable throughout the class. But Smallberg taught me more about computer science with more depth than I had learned in high school. The projects were relatively short, taking only two to four hours a week. They became increasingly difficult towards the end of the quarter, but there were ample resources to guide you.

With that said, I think it's important to mention that the challenges confronting this quarter were unique considering the pandemic and George Floyd protests. Smallberg didn't want to mislead us about what our grade would be, since he mentioned he didn't want to get in trouble last quarter. But what ended up happening is that we never got our midterm and our final grades back (for reference, it's been two weeks since the quarter ended). He made it a point that the midterms wouldn't be worth more than 10% of the grade and that the final would be no-harm, which I really appreciate. But we genuinely had no idea what our grade was throughout the quarter since the syllabus wasn't released until midterms week and the grade distribution wasn't released until Week 10. He said that he was still working with the CS department to figure out how to grade the class. But by the time he had a rough idea and we had received our estimated grades, we only had two hours until the deadline to decide if we wanted to take the class P/NP.

Based on other reviews and my experience with him, I'm willing to give him the benefit of the doubt. I've heard that the CS department can be notoriously slow, and Smallberg's delay in grading is probably a consequence of them and not him. Nevertheless, I would've appreciated more transparency about the grading process so we that we had a general idea of our grade throughout the quarter, especially for students who wanted to take the class P/NP.

Of course, this quarter was unique, and so were the administrative issues we had. But, if I had the chance, I would definitely take a class with him again. He's a great professor and I learned a lot more about CS because of him.

As far as the material goes, I thought the class was very reasonable and well paced. Smallberg is a pretty good lecturer and takes time to help everyone understand by going over topics in several different ways (analogies, directly with the code, and so on). However, this quarter (online due to COVID-19) was terribly unorganized. We weren’t told the details about midterms until the day before, and we were barely given any grades until the end of tenth week. We also weren’t given a grading scheme until the end of tenth week, and we still don’t have a real syllabus even now after the class has ended. I felt bad because smallberg seemed very stressed with the switch to online, but keeping students in the dark for ten weeks just seemed unprofessional and added additional stress. He also never seemed apologetic and was dismissive of students trying to ask about grades. I understand that he probably got a lot of people emailing him, but, really, what can he expect when people need to know if they should drop or switch to p/np? I also thought it wasn’t very nice that the practice midterms he gave were a completely different format (mostly multiple choice) from his actual midterm (typing out long passages of code). I had decided to open the midterm on my smaller tablet so I could work out code on my bigger laptop and couldn’t switch devices after opening the timed test- don’t make my mistake in the future. Outside from the logistical issues, I did enjoy the projects and the lectures, and I felt like I learned a decent amount about coding.

I have prior experience in CS, so this class was largely a breeze for me. I'm writing this review instead for all those taking the professor while our classes continue to be online due to the ongoing COVID-19 crisis. As an international student, I found Smallberg to be incredibly, incredibly accommodating, particularly given we numbered only around 15 of a 350 person class. He gave us an alternative times for both midterms and the final, and recorded and uploaded all his lectures (bless 2x speed). The final was also no-harm due to the circumstances. Only complaint: zybooks. A $77 waste of a textbook. It involved annoying, participation based labs which although they may have been helpful to others, are not worth the price we paid for them, especially given that we could get a pdf of the regular textbook, or just practice code on one of the hundred other websites out there, for free.

Very very solid professor. I came into this class with no confidence in my programming abilities, thinking that I would never be able to "get" how to code. Smallberg proved me wrong. A lot of people complain about his pacing but if you're like me and really wanna know how to code properly and understand the concepts, Smallberg's your man. He is very thorough in his teaching and explains the concepts, example code and even all possible errors you can make in a very comprehensive manner. The projects are alright, although watch out for Project 3 (a big step up from Project 1 and 2) and Project 7 (takes some time to digest all the scaffold code that's given to you). Shout out to the TA Alejandro Zapata too - he was super helpful and amazing! Overall, I'd 100% recommend Smallberg's CS31.

CS31 with Smallberg was a pretty interesting experience. Smallberg knows C++ inside out and is extremely informative. He is a good teacher but his midterms and final were pretty tricky. Smallberg is also a bit too strict when it comes to projects.

He is focusing a lot on details, which can help you prevent errors but makes the lecture pretty slow. He would generally answer your questions, but not for some of them, because usually they involve more advanced knowledge, and I guess he does not want to create confusion to other people in the class. If you really want to know more about computer science, go to the office hours!

It always seems like nobody is ever paying attention to Smallberg, which is kind of sad but I'm sure he's used to it since the first 5-6 weeks is sort of trivial is you have any sort of computer science knowledge. Personally, I think Smallberg is one of the best teachers I've ever had, because of how thorough he is. He really goes through every single step of the logic behind everything we learn in class, and if you email him he gives really in-depth responses as well that always answer any questions. Projects weren't too tough if you focus – set aside some hours and they're not too difficult.

This is a very well planned course that Smallberg has been teaching for a long time. His lectures are some of the slowest I've been to, he has way too much to say about everything, I didn't really enjoy listening to his lectures, especially the first half of the quarter where I still knew everything. The projects take time, but are not too hard, there's always test data to check if you made huge errors. This quarter there was a fire the days of the first midterm so he just combined the two midterms and I thought it was very easy. The final was harder but mostly straightforward.

This was both a rewarding and challenging class. I had some experience in CS entering the class, but not anything near extensive. While it was helpful to already have some background, I honestly don't think it was necessary as Smallberg goes over everything you need to know for the class, despite his repeated warnings that experience is necessary to take this class in the Fall. Early projects were very straightforward and could be finished quickly, but later projects were by far the most time consuming part of any of my classes. I was able to complete them all, but starting early really is important. The midterm (there were supposed to be 2, but the first one was cancelled due to the nearby fire) and final were tricky. On first look through I was not able to figure out how to answer many of the questions, but he does give plenty of time on the exams; they were never a time crunch. If you are careful on looking through the questions they are manageable. Projects make up 40% of the grade, midterm is 25%, and the final exam is 35%. However, the project grades are capped at 30 points above the average of your exam grades, so you need to do well on tests. This won't be a problem as long as you're careful on them . Lecture was helpful, Smallberg really knows his C++, and while he is dry, he does a good job conveying the content to the class. Discussion is honestly unnecessary if you know the content, but attending is still helpful for reiterating the concepts and to get extra practice for the exams. Smallberg does an excellent job at teaching this class, and even though it is time consuming, this is a good professor to take this class with.