Stahl was a great guy and very nice, but his lectures worked the same as melatonin gummies. They literally made me fall asleep every time. I don't think I attended more than three lectures in the entire quarter and learned almost entirely from the discussion. However, his tests were pretty fairly made and reflected what we were learning from the projects. The projects were also manageable and he often extended the deadline. He even ended up changing one of my project grades from a literal F- to a C after I spoke with him and clarified some things. Overall, he's a very sweet man, but it was just a really boring class overall and I feel like I learned more from outside the class.

lots of work

As someone with a good amount of coding experience (took AP CSA in high school) this class was generally quite easy. I do know that there were students who found the class to be difficult, however, so take whatever I say with a grain on salt.

Prof. Stahl was overall a great professor. He was good at teaching and going over the basics of C++ and coding. I stopped going to lectures after week two because I found them to be long and boring. He does record them, though, so you can always watch them on 2x speed (as mentioned the professor does talk kind of slow). I would definitely recommend going to discussion section, since the TAs do a quick condensed review of the week's content and you can get 1 point extra credit for attending a majority of discussion sections. The TA for my assigned section was pretty terrible (the LA was pretty good), but you are allowed to go to any of the sections to want and still get the extra credit, so I just went to a different TA's section for the rest of the quarter.

Because of the fires at the beginning of the quarter some material at the end of the course got cut and didn't make it onto the final. The exams were very fair (on the midterm Prof. Stahl basically gave us some freebie questions), though there were some annoying questions. We had six programming projects, and I would suggest starting them soon since working through them and debugging takes time. Project 3 was supposed to be the most difficult, and it took the most time out of all of them, but I heard that the professor and TAs were very helpful during office hours for any students who were stuck. Homework was probably the most annoying, and there were some instances with faulty/badly written questions, but the professor just ended up throwing those questions out.

Overall the class was pretty chill and I would highly recommend taking CS 31 with Stahl, especially if you don't have any programming experience.

Lectures are very long, but Prof Stahl is excellent. He genuinely cares abou student learning and is very good at explaining concepts. Exams are straightforward, lectures are recorded on Zoom, and practice problems are given.

I am not a cs major nor is cs required for my major, I just decided to take this class to see if I would be interested in it. If you are in this position, do not take this class!!! Other reviews said that no coding experience is necessary, but I did not find this to be the case. Howard used a lot of jargon without thorough explanation, which made the information hard to follow. While this class is titled "Introduction to Computer Science 1," there wasn't much introductory about it. Maybe it was an introduction to C++, but I think there was an unspoken expectation that most people had prior coding experience, at least with another language. Howard is a nice guy, and I do believe he truly cares and wishes success for his students, as class always has a Zoom option and is recorded. He also gave an extra credit midterm point for going to discussion which was nice. I was able to manage but it required extensive work outside of class (including buying and reading the textbook, even though you don't otherwise need it) and help from others. Overall, this clearly was more advanced than what I was looking for, so I suggest that if you are just looking to test the waters of cs, take PIC 10A or another easier alternative.

Take Stahl!!! He's such a great professor! He's super nice, helpful, and really knows his stuff. Sometimes his lectures can get boring, but I assure you, it's worth it for the amount he goes over information because you won't ever walk out super confused. He takes his time to explain stuff with repetition, metaphors, and he makes everything super clear and easy to understand. He's a nice grader, and accepts regrades on tests. The projects aren't nearly as difficult as I thought they would be, usually taking just a few hours (definitely under 10 and you have 2 weeks to do them). An A is definitely manageable as on a lot of the projects, 50%+ students got 100%, and the tests average ~80-85. You get a written/typed cheat sheet: 8x11in front and back for all exams. Overall 10/10 would definitely take this class with him again!

PLEASE TAKE ANY CLASS WITH STAHL HE IS THE GOAT!!!

Stahl genuinely cares about his students and is the example of what a College Professor should aim to be. He never leaves you confused and it is always really clear with what he wants. I will say, it was his first time teaching this course so he had mistakes throughout but he was very understanding, and human, as he would always make clear. His projects were pretty chill, maybe a little too easy at times but take advantage of that. I will say, ChatGPT will not help you at all because you have to understand the projects to do well on the exams, and it is also fails a good amount of test cases. Two midterms, a final, 5 projects, and 5 homework quizzes (20 mcq canvas quizzes). Anytime you need help or clarification, whether it's a project, or even an exam, he will always guide you in the right direction so never be afraid to go to his office-hours or ask for help during a test. His lectures are broken down well, and as a visual learner, he did a great job. He does skip over some harder topics like sorting which sucked as it is important and he also is kind of boring at times, but he is just trying to make it understandable and easier to digest. He is also a genuinely down-to-earth guy and fun to just chat with. You can tell he loves what he does and loves his students even more. I know that as he teaches the course more times, he will have fewer mistakes, cover more of the harder topics and have a more streamlined process. 10/10 professor and 10/10 human. Well done!

He uses the finder to open applications on his computer, and it lowk just pmo im ngl....

I had Howard for CS31, and I still like him a lot. Again, his lectures are boring sometimes, but he really tries to break things down for you to understand better. He sometimes speaks in his own way (“garbage-y values” “hair pins < >”), so you’ll have to get used to his language because he’s the one writing the exam. He is very helpful in office hours, so if you have any questions go ahead and ask him! Be warned though, he does have his own interpretation of some things (like what quadratic probing is) that may differ from the general definition, but if you bring it up to him he’ll admit the difference and either change his definition or accept both answers. The class should be pretty doable, but a friendly warning is don’t rely on ChatGPT too much because you do need to understand the projects for the exams. And, don’t copy paste your friend’s code! There are consequences for clear cheating (some people in our class got caught… so rip)!!!

Pretty easy class, Tests have a few tricky questions and Stahl makes a lot of grading mishaps, but he is quite accommodating and flexible. Would recommend taking CS 32 with Stahl, especially if you are not very confident in your coding skills