The first couple weeks are a little bit of a snooze since he reviews a lot of the concepts from CS 31. After it kicks into a lot of useful information that I wish I still remembered. This is an important class and it will be worth it to pay attention and learn the materials. The midterms are long and annoying but they aren't too bad in my opinion. The real killer is the final. It's really difficult and really long but don't worry because everybody does not great on it. The first two projects aren't bad but project 3 is the big one. Start early because it will take a lot of time. Our project 4 was super easy but I've known him to give longer ones during other quarters so be ready for a difficult projects 3 and 4.

Smallberg's pretty good at getting into the nitty-gritty of C++. Projects 3 and 4 are very time-consuming. Exams are hard. Homeworks are easy enough, as are the first couple of projects. Attend lectures and take notes, start early on the projects and study for the exams. I didn't do the last one well enough cause they're open book and open notes, but it cost me.

I am so lucky to have taken my both introductory cs classes with this professor, a professor who genuinely cares about his students. I enjoyed his lectures and learned a lot.

Great professor! Go to his and his TA's and LA's office hours. Also, massive props to LA Jahan!

Smallberg's lecture style of typing out code on the projector is actually very helpful and the notes I took in lecture were able to guide me through my projects, while also giving me some sample code to work off of. The time he takes during the 10 minute breaks and before/after class to answer student questions is invaluable and goes to show how much work he puts in to help his students out. Extremely knowledgeable about C++, and has an good sense of humor about it too! Lecture was good for larger concepts that could then be refined with practice problems in discussion. My number one tip is GO TO DISCUSSION. You can go so much more in depth on problems in a way that's more similar to the exams. Other than that, always plan to spend 15+ hours set aside for some of the larger products. They can be hard to finish by the deadlines sometimes.

If you can actually pay attention during Smallberg's 2 hours lecture, understanding the material for this class will be a breeze, assuming you did decent in cs 31. Highly recommend sitting front row. For projects, start early. Go to office hours a lot.
This class definitely has a heavy workload, especially in the final three weeks, but if you are interested in computer science, I highly recommend it.

Although Smallberg's lectures can be a bit slow, looking at Nachenberg's slides can get you through whatever you didn't understand/pay attention to. The projects weren't nearly as bad as I was expecting, but it's important not to make careless mistakes on projects as well as tests.

Smallberg's lectures aren't very useful in CS32; they're not very clear on what concepts he wants you to learn from them, and he uses the same monotone voice throughout every lecture. As such, many students attend Nachenberg's lectures and show up for Smallberg's exams only. Nachenberg also puts out lectures slides for CS32 that are extremely useful, and I'd recommend reading over those if you don't attend lecture.

Smallberg's project specs remain clear, specific, and easy to understand, which is always great. However, the projects this quarter take FAR more time than CS31's! Prepare to spend at least 20 hours a week working on Projects 3 and 4, and make this your primary class of the quarter to get good scores on the projects.

His CS32 exams are far less of a time crunch than CS31, and plenty of students leave the exams early. His two midterms were pretty difficult, but the final was surprisingly easy.

Your grade in this class only depends on your final if you take it in Winter. I say this because the 3rd and 4th projects are not graded. I strongly think this is because Nachenberg creates crazy specs that Smallberg cannot make grading scripts for. Let me put this in perspective: I got 100 on the midterms, scored well above the median on the first and second projects, finished the 3rd and 4th projects FULLY (I think these would have been a lot higher than the median), and think I did ok on the final (I wouldn't know since we did not get the final exam score either), and ended up with a B+.

At the end of the quarter Smallberg said we would get our scores "soon": I am still waiting on them. My advice is to not spend too much time on project 3 and 4, but spend enough time on them that you get a median score, because chances are, they won't be graded anyways. I spent too much time on project 4 that I could not focus my time on the final, which ended being the part that mattered most.

In spring, project 3 and 4 were considerably easier, and tests were just fair. As long as you attend lectures, do all homework and projects rigorously, and review Nachenberg's slides, you should be doing well in this class. The textbook is not necessary, and you can always find one online, so don't waste money on getting a physical copy.