granted this was during spring 2020 so corona made things tough but smallberg is the worst professor i've ever had. by the final, he hadn't graded either of the midterms or any assignment since week 3. he also never gave us a syllabus or true grading scheme until two hours before the pass/no pass decision deadline. he barely gave us an "estimate" ish of our grade an hour before we had to make those decisions for pass/no pass and was very snarky throughout the quarter in his responses to students. he also changed the entire format of midterms a few hours before the actual midterms themselves. i found it more useful to skip his lectures and use nachenbergs slides instead. nachenbergs slides will get you 10x farther than smallbergs lectures will. i spent 90% of my time all quarter doing work for this class and had to neglect my other classes. projects take an insane amount of time. project 3 is just pure insanity. terrible class. i did learn a lot of fundamentals (from nachenberg not smallberg of course) but this class was a nightmare

this class has good material, and smallberg is an efficient professor
but i felt the grading and workload of this class was highly unnecessary. projects are heavily long and inconsiderate of time of students, and while i see how it lets practice with some concepts, it gets really repetitive (do i really need 5 classes for same style of objects)
i think the tests were nice and a much better measure of how well somebody understood the concept, especially with how some people "collaborate" too much, but tests are a level playing field. this class should grade more based on tests and reduce project workload.

This class is definitely challenging, but overall wasn't too bad. It is really important to stay ahead of your work, as Smallberg does not accept late projects. The TAs are very helpful and office hours can ease your mind before submitting a project.

This class took up my whole quarter. The last half of the quarter the projects get crazy time consuming. It seemed like we were always doing a project or studying for an exam, there wasnt a time where I wasnt doing CS32. Smallberg definitely knows a lot about CS, but his lectures are filled with trivia about non-CS topics and him explaining what not to do. Whenever I went to lecture everyone was asleep or not paying attention and online shopping. We got behind in lecture, meaning for nearly all of the projects and homework assignments we were using topics that hadn't been talked about in class. Fortunately, Professor Nachenberg has slides that are extremely helpful, which is what my friends and I used to learn the material. There are LA workshops once a week usually which can be helpful depending on the LAs teaching. TA discussion section is also helpful (my TA taught us a lot clearer than the professor), but that depends on your TA. Be prepared to do a lot of self-study to get the concepts and have very little time to study for exams ( you usually have a project due the day before an exam). However, this is an extremely important class for CS so be sure to take it during a quarter where you can put all of your time into it!

Dr. Smallberg is a great professor but his online lectures (recorded) are long and dull (with the exception of his monkey and his clumsiness). If you intend to get through the lecture without falling asleep watch the video at 2x speed. Also refer to Nachenberg's slides where appropriate; they help a lot!

In this class, Smallberg builds very good intuition, as he will go on and on for a long time for why a certain algorithm/practice is incorrect, before finally showing the correct one. While I hated this method of teaching while I took the class, looking back, it helped me out a lot. Smallberg is also a walking C++ dictionary, as he was good at answering any question about C++ syntax.

There are 4 Projects and 5 Homeworks in this class. The homeworks were as hard as CS31 projects, while projects were longer (except for Project 1 and Project 4). Project 3 is the most brutal one, as he gives you two weeks to work on it. We had the Battleship project. I procrastinated the first week (bad idea), which forced me to work A LOT in the second week. Out of the last 48 hours before it was due, I spent 14 hours working on the project. Recommendation: do not procrastinate on projects.

For this class, use Smallberg's lectures to learn, and then Nachenberg's slides to review. It will help in the long run! Overall, in hindsight, I found this class to be more fun than CS31 and CS33; discussing edge cases and creating test cases with others was the most fun part of the projects.

SMALLBERG is KING

CS32 as a whole is an entire different ballpark than CS31. I took CS31 in the Winter with a different professor and entering this class was very different and. much more difficult. First of all, his lectures are entirely asynchronous and he posts them on the days class is scheduled for, and also on those days he holds a Q&A session where you can ask him anything about the material/homework/project during the assigned lecture time. His lectures work as asynchronous because this way we won't fall behind on lectures, because I know for students who took this class before Covid, they were always like two lectures behind. I guess that is a plus, but personally, I learn better with in-class lectures. As a word of advice, I would recommend watching these lectures literally on 2x speed and if you are still a little lost, go to discussion. I found that I didn't learn as well from the lectures but the discussions helped a lot, which I think is because I had a TA who explained these difficult concepts in a very manageable way. Your TA does matter in this class, and if you decide the TA you have isn't presenting the material in a way you can learn, go to a different TA's discussion. I would also highly recommend going to the TA office hours. Even if I didn't really have questions, having an environment to work in where everyone was doing the same project made me more motivated to do the projects. Also, and this is very important, DO NOT WAIT TO DO THE PROJECTS. Our projects were usually due on Tuesdays and the next one releases THE SAME TUESDAY. I often was overwhelmed by the workload and didn't start the next project until the weekend since I worked so hard last minute to complete the previous project, and then I would find myself in a difficult cycle of being behind on the project. So GO TO OFFICE HOURS the week the project is assigned and AT LEAST get started on the project the week before it is due; your whole life will be much easier if you work on the project the week in advance. I got a surprisingly good grade in this class and I would say it was because I got really good grades on all of the projects and homework assignments and did about average on the exams. The first exam was in person and even though I got average on the exam (70%) I still felt way more prepared on this exam than the second exam, which was online. The second exam was simply 3 coding questions and introduced a topic none of us were familiar with yet (trees), but somehow was supposed to get since we knew recursion. The final was very different, since it was online and had no coding questions and instead tested on some sorting, but mostly entirely Big-O. Even though it was "multiple choice", every question had about 20-30 options, so you really had to know your stuff. Regardless, very difficult class, but work really hard on the projects and homework to get good grades on them, and do about average to maybe above average on the exams and I think you'll be good.

Extra:
-I felt like understanding linked lists was the big turning point for me in this class, because understanding how they worked built on many of the other data structures in this class. Also, recursion is going to be difficult, but do your best to understand it through all of the assigned practice, and LA worksheets because unfortunately, they also test pretty heavily on your knowledge of recursion.
-Project 3 is always making some sort of game and it mainly tests on recursion, inheritance, choice of data structures, along with just your ability to come up with solutions. You get two weeks on this project, but it takes lowkey forever, so definitely start it the first week it's assigned because you WILL have questions, and you will run into a lot of errors.

The jump between CS31 and CS32 is pretty big. I went into CS32 knowing it was a weeder class and I almost got weeded out. The first two projects are pretty manageable, but project 3 will literally ruin you so please start the day it is assigned. I spent nearly ten hours for like three days straight trying to get a FEW function completed. Do not slack in this class. My only real issue with the course is that the lectures can be quite boring and that the tests (at least the second midterm and final) were not easy to prepare for and only covered a few topics. It was hard because the final, for example, was almost entirely big-O, which only was covered in like a lecture and a half. Other than that, Smallberg is a nice guy and the class is just hard. Make sure to just start early and ask for help when you need it because the TAs and Smallberg will usually accommodate.

took this class as someone with no cs background other than cs31. smallberg was really nice overall and he just posted recorded lectures every week and had q&a sessions during the live lecture times. the projects were manageable but if you aren't already good at coding you should expect to dedicate a good chunk of time to it. it also just feels like so much work because there was a homework/project due almost every week (sometimes both in the same week).
exams were pretty rough for me, both on paper (midterm 1) and online(the other 2 exams).
overall smallberg is cool and i can honestly say his lectures aren't unbearable (as someone who hates lectures). i appreciate him cutting out literally every second of the lecture that wasn't necessary and his monkey that pops up every now and then. take this class!!