The professor's teaching approach raises concerns. The course material, including lectures and assignments, appears to be directly sourced from Carnegie Mellon University, with no original content. Students may find more value in the original CMU lectures, as they cover the same material in a more effective manner. The exams are challenging and primarily multiple-choice, which might not adequately evaluate students' understanding. Additionally, the professor's attitude comes across as condescending, diminishing the learning experience. Despite having numerous teaching assistants, the support provided in discussion sessions is not effective. This course experience contributes to the perspective that some college classes may not offer significant value.

This class is difficult, mainly because the tests are focused on very specific subjects, and the amount of practice problems aren't that good.

This class covers a variety of computer architecture topics, but the midterm and final are always from a subset of very specific practice problems which you need to study (in my case, cram) to do well. The problem is that many of these topics are not covered well online, forcing you to rely on Reinman's antiquated normal time lectures (since he does reverse classroom).

For example, one question on the exam was focused on a concept called "TCPI"; however, this was nowhere in the textbook, nor was it in the prelecture slides + lectures that Reinman does for his reverse classroom setup. Hence, you're forced to learn everything about this question from: old tests on test banks, the practice final, 1 lecture where Reinman kinda shoddily covers this material, and discussion slides (which end up just taking the same problems from test banks or the practice final).

This style of learning is mirrored in many other questions in this class. The main reason this class is hard is because of lack of practice problems; many times, the concept is only covered once in a practice problem, whereas it takes many repetitions for me to actually understand what's going on.

I managed to get an A by just cramming the small subset of practice problems that Reinman tests on. I would recommend others to do the same if they want to get an A. I don't think I learned a lot in this class through lectures or the textbook, but cramming for the exams made me learn something (although I'll probably forget it).

All in all, Reinman isn't a horrible choice for this class, but the class in my opinion is just insanely boring. However, it's not setup well at all, and there is so much material every week (textbook, prelecture, normal lecture, discussion sections), and none of it matters except like 20 minutes from discussion each week.

BEWARE: This is definitely NOT an easy class - many of us who took this class this quarter were fooled by the grade distribution from last year (because they made final optimal). The midterm was ok, but the final was much more difficult with ambiguous problems and instructions, and many people didn't do well. For some reason they decided not to curve the class at all - quite surprising - so many ended up with bad grades. The "unique" teaching style was not my favorite - the live lectures (they called it "Q&A section") were completely unorganized and confusing from my point of view, and you'd be probably better off not attending them. I later found TA discussions and textbooks much more helpful, so I stopped attending them since Week 3 or so, and managed to get an A (but with lots of hard work).

While I didn't find Reinman to be the most engaging lecturer ever (I guess its because everyone CS lecturer seems a little dull after Carey's class), I can't deny the fact that he did an outstanding job teaching the class. He made me feel very comfortable in his class and answered all the questions everybody had.
He also appears to be willing to increase the weight of your final to make up for poor midterms if you show a demonstrable improvement on the final. He does use a flipped-classroom approach and also has 4 hours of live lecture every week, which means there is a lot of lecture to attend. However, I found most of this to be very useful to help understanding course material. It is very evidence that Reinman wants students to do as well as possible in his class and to master the material.
The midterm was very reasonable though the final was quite difficult in my opinion.
Overall I definitely recommend this class. Reinman is an outstanding professor and definitely deserves all the praise he has received.

I did not really enjoy this class, but I appreciate that Professor Reinman is a really good explainer so that made it easier.

The "flipped classroom" format of this class required us to watch about 1-2 hours of extra video each week, which made the instruction during actual lecture feel more optional, since it was just going over the pre-recorded lectured.

The grading in this class is stressful. I'm sure he curves nicely (grades haven't been released as of rn) but weighting 40% Midterm and 50% Final is a really unforgiving grading scheme.

Overall, this is definitely a class where an A is achievable with some effort, but actually enjoying the content and the way it's delivered will depend a lot on preference.

I agree with the other reviews from Spring '22 that this quarter did not go so well, and I'm surprised Reinman has such good reviews from previous quarters.

This class used a flipped classroom approach. Normally, I'm okay with (and even prefer) flipped classrooms, but in this class it was not executed well. Before each in-person lecture, there would be a prerecorded lecture (usually between 30-70 mins). The prerecorded lectures were extremely dense. In the in-class lectures, Reinman would go over some content from the videos, answer questions, and do examples. The in-class lectures were extremely disorganized; I definitely got more out of them by watching the recordings afterwards instead of attending live. That way, I could watch the unimportant parts at 2x speed and focus more on the examples, pausing and making sure I really understand them. The in-class examples are super important for exams, so be sure to focus on those. Definitely don't try to memorize every detail of the pre-recorded lectures, because that won't help you for the tests (though still understand them). The midterm and final both contained questions that were very similar to the in-class examples. Overall though, the flipped classroom approach was extremely inefficient. Despite Reinman's insistence that the flipped classroom approach doesn't require more time, we'd be spending 5-6 hours per week just on lecture, and only some of it was relevant for the exams or labs. I'm sure there must be a more efficient way to teach the class.

There were four labs, each worth 8% of the grade. I'd say the order of difficulty, from hardest to easiest, was data lab, bomb lab, attack lab, and parallel lab. Basically, the labs got easier as the course went on. Bomb and parallel lab had extra credit. I found bomb and attack labs to be quite fun! It's important not to procrastinate -- start labs at least 2 days in advance. I learned this the hard way by ending up in the hospital due to a stomach ulcer from drinking too much caffeine the day parallel lab was due because I falsely assumed it would be super easy and procrastinated on starting it, lol. The deadlines on labs (and homework) are very firm, so you won't have as much leeway as you did with CS31/32 projects. Unlike the CS31/32 projects though, you can definitely get 100% or more on each lab since all the test cases are provided, allowing you to know what grade you will get before you submit. It's possible to do the labs using brute force and other tactics, but I'd strongly recommend against that since you won't be able to do that on the tests. Attack lab and particularly bomb lab are emphasized on the final, so make sure you truly understand each step on a deep conceptual level and don't over-rely on the debugger.

There was one homework each week. The first homework was super difficult for some reason but the rest were fine. They are graded on completion, but don't slack off on them because they are important for the exams. Some test questions were similar to homework problems.

Discussion was mandatory, which was annoying, but overall I kind of liked it since we can get an easy 10% of our grade by just attending. I found discussion, particularly the LA worksheets, to be very helpful. The worksheets are graded on completion and our LA's compiled a document with in-depth solutions and explanations.

The exams were very tough. We only got 40 minutes for the midterm, which wasn't enough, and I found the questions to be quite difficult. The class average was 50%, the lowest Reinman had seen in his 20+ years teaching at UCLA. He accused us of cheating on the midterm since we had done well on the labs, which I personally thought was a bit unfair since we had 2 weeks to do each lab vs. 40 mins for the midterm, so of course we would have done better on the labs. However, I really like how Reinman replaced our midterm score with our final exam score if we improved a lot on the final. That really came in clutch for me. I got a 40% on the midterm (53% after the TA's gave out partial credit). It was the worst I'd ever done on a test in my life and it really motivated me to grind for the final. To redeem myself, I started studying two weeks in advance of the final and created an intense study routine which involved reviewing my lecture notes, making flashcards, redoing homeworks, redoing LA worksheets, and redoing labs. I was scared that the final exam would be super difficult and that my hard work would end up being all for nothing, but I was pleasantly surprised. The final was quite doable and we got the full 3 hours. I managed to get an 83%, and since that replaced my midterm score, with Reinman's generous curve I was able to get an A in the class. I found the class to be quite stressful and it took a toll on my mental and physical health, but it ended fine and I learned interesting stuff.

Chose "Snazzy Dresser" as a tag because "arms like tree trunks" isn't an option.

As to whether the lectures are engaging, honestly that probably depends on how interesting you find the material. I personally did, and Prof. Reinman himself is a very capable lecturer. Lecture slides were very clear and informative, to the point where I solely needed those to study to do well in the course.

Programming-type assignments were fairly graded in my opinion, and I wanna say I *think* test cases were open source? The only reason I say this is because I remember noting specifically that Nachenberg didn't do that for CS 131 later on. If I recall correctly, the later assignments did sorta have solutions that built upon each other, so if you were stuck in the beginning, you may have been out of luck.

That being said, the exams were *extremely* fairly written in my opinion, and if I recall correctly, open book and open note. If you did well on the projects and had printouts of relevant sections of the lecture slides, you're adequately prepared.

Prof. Reinman's office hours were extremely helpful too, and I got everything from clarification on concepts to his views on the state of the software industry. CS 33 is definitely really detail-oriented so it'll be tough for people who hate that, but taking it with Prof. Reinman is a strong recommend.

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.

Class with a lot of material. Work was not too hard, but there's a lot of different topics that are covered and it can sometimes be confusing on what to focus on. Labs are pretty fun, but can be a bit tricky if you are not too familiar with the material. These sometimes have extra credit. Tests were not too bad, but it was difficult to get partial credit, which was bad for quite a bit of people based on the group chats. Personally found it difficult to concentrate during lectures, but that may be due to spring quarter distance learning. You'll learn a lot.

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