I want to preface this by saying I've never written a Bruinwalk review before. That is how negatively I view this course - and I haven't even taken the final yet. If you don't have to take this course, DO NOT TAKE IT. I'm writing this review ASAP so I don't forget about it once I'm out of this course, as I never want to think about it ever again. I know once that final hits, I won't want to look back.

First and foremost, the projects. The projects are INSANELY long and quite difficult. There is no hand-holding; you are ON YOUR OWN. There is some "guidance" but realistically you will be spending 10+ hours on each project, all things considered. Like another reviewer said, even the setup had no explanation. Just starting the projects felt like a massive scavenger hunt. Be ready to dedicate entire days to just the projects alone. They are in a "Part A", "Part B" structure, where each week you get part A, then the next week part B of that project. Part B is typically slightly easier than part A. Following that, you get an entirely new project to start from scratch - completely unrelated! The only "plus-side" to this (if you could call it that) is you get a 48-hour extension on any project, no questions asked, just by filling out their project extension form. You can use this for each project, so in theory, projects each have a two day extension attached. But this doesn't really help when you're getting projects weekly anyway.

Having taken the midterm, I can say it was moderately difficult with a 70% median, and deviated pretty significantly from the practice. Extremely long - I worked until the very last minute. There were certainly some curveballs. I got baited by a previous Bruinwalk review that said the midterm was just like the practice exam. I'm not sure if that was the case before, but it CERTAINLY is not the case this time around. The practice was 4 pages long, with the actual midterm being 20 PAGES.

Speaking of lectures, the first half of the course was quite alright (Eskin), but the second half's lecturer was subpar (Ernst). Eskin was moderately engaging and I actually managed to follow his lectures. Ernst on the other hand, simply cannot lecture. Whenever he walked up there, it seemed like he read directly off the slides. I opted to watch the recordings instead of attend in-person lecture as it was a massive waste of time. That's a plus though - the lectures for this course were recorded. However, they only posted lectures for a given day once the next lecture had already occurred. For example, lectures were on Tues/Thurs. If you missed Tuesday, you would have to wait until Thursday to see Tuesday's lecture - and then wait until next Tuesday to get that Thursday recording.

The homework is essentially a bunch of leetcode problems, with some of them being comically easy, and others being extremely time-consuming - almost project-tier. There were 7 of them, so you can imagine how that piles up on top of the crazy weekly projects.

TL;DR: Project-heavy, long and tedious exams, recorded lectures (delayed), heavy workload. Just a difficult course overall that does not feel rewarding to take.

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.