I haven't even finished this class yet, but I feel the need to write a scathing review so that all possible future students know, DO NOT TAKE THIS CLASS IF YOU DO NOT HAVE TO.

Every week is assignment after meaningless assignment. We had homework, a project, and a mandatory guest speaker lecture + discussion assignment THE SAME WEEK as our midterm. The homework assignment was so poorly designed that only 3 people were able to solve the last coding problem due to a memory limit issue, so all of us apparently just wasted our time on an unsolvable problem right before the midterm. Mind you, there are project deadlines every single Friday (at noon for some reason), so all of this came after a horrendously long project designed to have at minimum a 30 min-1 hour runtime. How can we reasonably iterate on a project if it takes the whole day just to test it a few times? I think the entire class had to use AI on it, and the average was still a 60% because of how impossible it was. I had to run it overnight and force my computer not to sleep.

The midterm also was 20 pages long and significantly harder than the practice midterm, which was only about 4 pages long. Many concepts were not mentioned a single time in class, only in discussion. The professors were also whispering to each other the entire time and kept picking up phone calls, which many of us found to be disruptive and disrespectful to the students.

They also enforce mandatory participation at least once with both professors, so everyone participated once and never showed up to lecture again because we don't learn anything efficiently. Eskin is not able to get through a single sentence without stuttering and ending it incompletely.

Another sign that the professors don't actually care about the student experience is how disorganized the assignments are. Not a single deadline is posted except for deep into the Lecture 1 slides, so every time I need to check when something is due, I have to scroll about 50 slides in. Additionally, NOTHING is explained by the project instructions. It was extremely hard to get started on Project 1 because the instructions did not even specify that it was a coding project, let alone where to find the files that we needed to work with. I had to deduce that I was supposed to go to the files tab and download the project zip, then write a python script to produce the answer file. Finding out what the project was took longer than actually doing it. They also do not mention at all where to submit projects in the specifications. I have to scroll through all of the BruinLearn announcements to find the submission link every week. Is it that hard to include basic instructions, the deadline, and submission link in the project instructions? Any of us could organize this class better.

This class is hard to be hard. They want us to feel like it's a challenge, but they do it by assigning a load of assignments and enforcing arbitrary requirements rather than making it a challenging intellectual experience. DO NOT TAKE THIS CLASS.

Super cool class if you're interested in the real world application of algorithms, even more so if you have a budding interest in bioinformatics. In each of the projects, you implement industry standard tools from scratch, which is super rewarding but challenging. There's no "dumbing" down going on in any aspect. The class has a large breadth and being familiar with CS180 concepts such as dynamic programming is really helpful. HWs were a few easy to medium LeetCode style problems, around 2-3 hours max. The real issue in this class are the projects. Not only are they insanely hard and time-consuming (although they do get easier throughout the quarter), the specs are super sparse and unhelpful. Constantly need to go to office hours to get clarification and direction. First two projects probably took me about 15 hours each. Exams are ridiculously easy though, almost identical to the practices they give out. Lectures are pretty useless. Textbook is surprisingly amazing, being incredibly readable.

Even though it was one of the most time-consuming classes I've taken at UCLA, learnt so much and got a lot of exposure in the industry. Would definitely recommend to anyone who likes algorithms!

This course is honestly very interesting, but the amount of homework and projects can be overwhelming if you don't work ahead. Prof. Eskin taught the first half of the class, and he's eccentric in a fun way -- excited to be there and tries his best to engage with students. Unfortunately, this first half of the class is still a bit boring if you're not interested in sequencing & alignment -- Eskin goes through the material very thoroughly with state-of-the-art techniques, and so if that's your research interest, then you might find this half of the class to be useful. The homework is essentially a bunch of tedious (but fairly easy) leetcode questions, and the projects require you to work ahead. I've heard that you can get extensions whenever you need but with one lengthy project a week, getting behind on projects hurts you more than anything. The midterm covers this first half of the coruse and is extremely easy if you understand the concepts covered.

Note, you have to buy the $80 textbook so just be aware of that.