Reinmann is a super nice guy but this is not a very easy class. We did too well on the midterm and he made the final extremely hard. A lot of practice is needed. Homework often took a while.

I feel like walking away from this class, I learned a lot about assembly and also learned really cool topics surrounding buffer overflow attacks and examining memory in complex ways. The labs were the highlight of this class for me, specifically the bomb lab and the attack lab, which I think both of would be very hard to cheat on other than just using someone else to do them for you.

Outside of those labs, I really struggled to pay attention or focus in this class whatsoever. I took smallberg in a completely virtual format in fall and nachenberg in a completely in person format in winter, and excelled in both, so you’d think a flipped classroom would be a combination of both of these and I would be able to focus well. Not the case. The pre class lecture videos are very mundane and are nail biters to suffer through, but they are where a majority of the learning will happen. In actual lecture time, looking around the room I saw minesweeper, google QuickDraw, working on other classes, and sleeping. I can’t blame any of these actions, as picking out what was actually useful or needed during lecture time was about as hard as finding a needle in a haystack. In class examples were very important to do well on exams, but I’d usually be so checked out at the completely random moments these were gone over that I completely missed them. I’d definitely enjoy some level of linearity or normal thought progression during lecture time rather than the scatterbrained nature of the class, and I think that would help to keep peoples attention to a much greater degree. I don’t think a flipped lecture is entirely the issue, but it did not work for this professor and his teaching style. It could work if the professor is very adamant about it being efficient, but I don’t believe it is the best for his students.

Exams:
Midterm was a shitshow, I think that’s very clear from other reviews and the professor himself. There was a slight lack of responsibility and a pointing finger nature at his students regarding this exam, but I don’t think this was the professors intention whatsoever. He definitely understood his mistakes, and this was clear from the final, where he even very generously re used a problem from the midterm that every sane student should have looked over and learned how to do.

The professor was a very knowledgeable and smart person, who was enjoyable to talk to about a variety of topics, however I think the exams and style for teaching need a harsh re evaluation and this quarter may have served as a wake up call.

In terms of getting a good grade, this quarter seems to have been an anomaly and I would say it’s a bit harder to get an A without studying or putting in too much effort like cs31 and cs32.

Now I understand why people always tell you bruinwalk reviews are polarized. I didn’t like the midterm it was too short (40 mins were given), and did terrible on it. However, I started reviewing for the final a lot earlier , I showed up to his office hours asking questions and I redid the projects. I found him very patient and helpful. Many others don’t think this way , but I actually enjoyed the labs (especially the bomb lab and attack lab ) , they’re pretty interesting and helpful in solidifying the concepts. I also showed up to all the discussions ( which I think should be made optional , as you have other better things to do sometimes) and eventually ended with an A+. I think Reinman definitely replaced my midterm with final. In terms of lab reuse , while I’m not a big fan of old labs being reused, I’m also against those who just googled it , at the end of the day it’s against your own learning(which really matters in the long run) if you simply look up the solutions online. I think I put in the hard work and I’m satisfied with what I got, I learned so much in this class

There will likely be a number of reviews for Reinman from Spring 22, so I will just briefly sum up the extensive problems from his teaching of this course:

Exams - The average on the midterm was a 49.54, and the final was a 62.82. Standard deviation was 23.39 and 20.76 respectively.

Reinman admitted that less than 10% of students got one of the 4 midterm questions correct--but rather than eliminating that question or taking responsibility for the low score, he doubled down, saying that he suspected students who were doing well on labs but not on the exams were cheating. This midterm question in particular was very similar to a homework question that we got a full week to complete, and only about 12 minutes to complete on this exam. A later announcement said he was "not satisfied" with the midterm and that he "wants you all to do better".

The final exam was a similar story, just with a somewhat better grading scheme--still, when 40% of people got a similar question wrong, he called it "a shame" and asked "whether you really did the labs".

Cheating Accusations - The average scores for the labs was close to an A+, while the combined exam average was a 56. Reinman repeatedly expressed that he believed the class was not truly doing the labs, suggesting that students were copying from others.

As a result of this, Reinman said that final grades would be curved based only on your improvement between the midterm and the final, stating that "Labs and homework are great, but I cannot have ensured that you worked on those on your own. So there is no replacement for the exams." Thus, the "only real measure of our performance" were two low-score, often unrealistic exams, one of which he admitted was "one of the lowest averages (if not the lowest) of any test I've ever given in my 20+ years at UCLA."

So--the dozens of hours many students put in to ensure that their lab grades were good enough to offset the unrealistically difficult exams? Probably cheating, says Reinman. It won't factor into your curve.

Oh, and Reinman was so mad about his poor evaluations from this quarter that he took the time to send us an announcement addressing an evaluation from a student that he copied verbatim from MyUCLA (as a reminder, Evaluations of Instruction claim to be "anonymous and confidential" and require students to sign off as such.) Some quotes from this announcement:
- "One student complained that they learned nothing from the class - which I find hard to believe, at least they should have learned not to take a class with me again"
- "It is pretty hypocritical for someone to cheat on the labs and then tell me that I don't care."

Overall, my hard work didn't matter (I got curved up by a single point), I spent countless hours trudging through assembly code just to be accused of cheating with no evidence, and Reinman still thought it necessary to complain about his poor reviews. Don't recommend.

To be honest, from the very start of this class and to the very end, I absolutely despised this class. As the quarter went on, the class just continued to take and take from me. It took my sanity, it took my time, it took my sleep, it took my thoughts, my hopes and fears and dreams and aspirations, anything that I had, was gone into the endless void that is CS33.

So why did I give this class and Reinman a 5/5 here on the Walk of Bruins?

I truly believe that, as difficult as this class is, if you put in the work, you'll get the grade you want. (woop dee doo, what a shocker)

The class, and I believe I can speak for many of my peers, started to truly go downhill right after the midterm, when the 'original' average for the 8 pm midterm was a 48% (which was brought up to a 67% after partial credit was given out), but I think seeing such a ridiculously low average really shocked everyone (including Reinman) into really busting their chops for the final.

I got a literal 10% on the first midterm because I made the mistake of not submitting more detailed work to squeeze out that partial credit.

So, with promises of a generous curve, a readjustment of weights for the exams, and extra credit on labs, I decided not to drop the class.

Well, I'm not gonna tell my whole story since it literally involves me sitting down for hours a day just rewatching lectures, practicing labs, and doing the LA worksheets.

Fast forward to the final, I managed to pull out a 64% on the final, with the class average being something a lot higher probably, since some of ya'll are just assembly geniuses, but for the below average assembly person like me, I was very happy with my grade.

I was honestly expecting to receive about a C to a C+ since the exams category is a whopping 50% of your grade

I ended with a B+ in the class.

And the big shocker too, Reinman decided not to curve the class this quarter since apparently half the class got A's.

I'm unsure of how he allocated the final weights, and how much the extra credit counted for (I did all of the extra credit btw), but my uncurved grade was a B+, after a terrible midterm and a mediocre final.

So all in all, yes this class is pretty difficult, but this class definitively epitomizes the notion of "you earn the grade you work for."

I don't feel that I cheesed a B+ or I lucked out with a B+, because I know I sat down and studied as much as I could for this class, it would not have been possible to get a B+ had I just cruised my way to the final.

Overall, take Reinman. This was the last quarter online, so of course your experience may differ from mine, but one thing stands whether its online or not, TAKE REINMAN!!!

No idea about everything he said

I scored an A in CS 31 and 32, yet a B- in this class. Here's why.
Reinman uses the backwards-classroom approach, which you've probably read about (watch a video before each lecture, and the lecture discussion is about the video).

First of all, the class was at 8 AM on Monday and Wednesday, and oftentimes I simply did not have the time to watch the video in the time frame he gave us (he would upload it roughly a day before the class).

What made this class extremely difficult for me was the lack of clarity in what Reinman was saying in his lecture videos. He used vocabulary loosely and did not explain things in the way that the computer understands them. Smallberg, on the other hand, was a master at introducing concepts in a way that conceptually makes sense with the computer.

Thirdly, most of the content (which is a BUTTLOAD of work) is not even on the exam!

It was really frustrating to see that I put in a lot of hard work and have the CS intelligence to do well, yet failed in my standards (B-). I honestly believe this is the fault of the professor though.

NOTE: If you decide to take this class, FOCUS ON THE LABS!! I made the mistake of studying for the final by making sure I understood and memorized every detail of the videos instead of practicing the labs.

CS系的Haofei Fan！我就问还有谁？？？ 拉面人万岁！！！

I'll just put it this way: when you think other classes are hells this one is heaven! It is literally that big of a difference. Holly Reinman!

You got this class, you got the best deal ever.

This class has too hard exams. Some of the homework has bugs.

First, the positives. I appreciate that Reinman knows his field well, and when he's talking about hardwarey things it's evident that he has the capability to be a terrific lecturer . At least in the start of the quarter, the in-person lectures were genuinely engaging and I found myself wanting to go to every class. The labs were never absurdly difficult, the workload was entirely reasonable, and everyone from Reinman to the TAs was willing to be helpful.

That being said, the structure of the class was a disaster waiting to happen. The negatives:

a) We had to watch roughly 1.5 hours of pre-lectures BEFORE the in-person lectures. These in-person lectures were marketed as Prof. Reinman reviewing additional examples to solidify our understanding of a concept, but that didn't end up being the case. For the first 3 weeks or so, the in-person lectures were at least 70% Q&A, with students asking Reinman the same questions over and over (to the point where he wore a shirt with one frequently-asked-question printed on it). To Reinman's credit, he did go over useful examples when he wasn't consistently being bombarded with the same questions; but regardless, this did mean that I would spend roughly 6-7 hours a week on CS 33 lectures alone and at least 2 of those hours would be useless - which is simply unfeasible. Keep in mind that Nowatzki, the fall CS 33 professor, gets through roughly the same content in about half the lecture time - so it's definitely not impossible.

b) The in-class lecture examples were often all over the place. Sometimes he'd bring up a concept, then go into details on some aspect of it, then bring up an applied example with a slide of assembly and completely forget to tie things back to what he was originally talking about. Other times he'd put up a slide full of random debugging output and explain maybe a quarter of it before moving onto the next slide, then return to the original slide 5 minutes later after having gone off in a separate direction entirely. Suffice it to say that, even though the examples were helpful, you'd need to spend a ton of time just thinking about them on your own because the explanations in class usually wouldn't be enough.

c) The slides used in the pre-lectures were old and taken straight from other sources. Reinman would sometimes write on them, but his handwriting was a bit tough to read. Again, not the worst thing in the world, but it showed that Reinman put very little effort into his visual aids. This spilled over into in-class lectures, which often similarly consisted of Reinman scrawling sloppy diagrams and notes on the whiteboard that confused me more than if I were to just attend lecture with my eyes closed.

d) The discussions were mandatory for some reason. I honestly don't quite get the logic behind this; the structure was identical to the discussion content in CS 31 and 32 and even 35L (TA presents slides, LA runs through a worksheet), and none of those classes had mandatory discussions. There's a case to be made for the content of CS 33 being more foreign to most people, but even then, mandatory discussions?

e) By the time the midterm rolled around, Reinman seemed to be rather burnt out with us as a class. After the midterms were graded, he sent out a long email basically accusing us of cheating because the midterm (which we were given 45 minutes for) average was lower than the average on one of the labs (for which we had 2 weeks).

Reinman isn't a *horrible* professor, but he isn't a particularly good one. All of the flaws with the class seem like they could be easily fixed with some actual effort on his part. If he were to clean up the visuals and not be so snarky about the test averages, I might have even liked him and the class. However, as it stands CS 33 is hard enough conceptually without a class structured as poorly as this one.