Worst professor I’ve ever had.

Amazing class. Professor Srivastava made lectures highly interesting and provided us with a very solid foundation of digital logic. There is a lot of content, and while the course does start out slow, it picks up pace quickly in the second half after the transition to state machines and datapaths. The labs are tough yet very rewarding, and Professor Srivastava's lectures and advice will help approach them. Overall, Professor Srivastava and this class have piqued my interest in digital logic.

Do not take this class under any circumstances. Every aspect of this class is unfair. The workload is condensed so that most of the work is in the last two weeks of the class and finals week, resulting in all of your time being allocated towards this class. The assignments for those last two weeks and the final have extremely unfair grading practices that result in receiving a failing grade if your submission is not perfect. Be prepared to appeal your grade. My original grade for this class was a C and the only reason my grade is now a B- is due to appealing my grade with Dean Wesel.
Overall Professor Srivastava is the ideal demonstration of an incompetent Professor as he refuses to recognize the deficiencies in his course and address them when they are presented to him on a silver platter. As a result he should not be permitted to teach this course again. Perhaps that will happen if ZERO people enroll the next time he is assigned to teach this course.

Overall, Professor Srivastava is a great lecturer who truly cares our learning.

Wait for a different professor to take this class. I understood the material very well, and I did above average on both of the midterms and the final design project, but I still ended with a B because of the design assignments. The first seven weeks of the class were very light, but the professor assigned a quarter's worth of work in the last three weeks, including multiple design assignments (which none of the other professors for this class do). His instructions were so unclear that the median on the last design assignment was a zero, and this counted for a substantial amount of our grade. Even the TA's didn't understand the professors instructions on these assignments.

The professor thinks he is reasonable, but he is the least understanding professor I've ever had, and it is very clear he doesn't care about his students in the slightest. He took a subject that I was very interested in and made it boring. The only good thing about this class was that I liked the material.

Reviews are right about the assignment schedule, we had two 30-minute problem sets and 1 quiz in the first 8 weeks (basically nothing for the first weeks). Class material is not hard, and he tries to upload lectures. Most of his lectures were uploaded, but sometimes just looking at the lecture slides he provides is easier. He had a very generous late policy, giving 7 late days to spread out on a total of 3 assignments. However, the two design assignments had, one serving as the final, were slightly confusing to understand, and his Autograder was pretty rigid with errors so if anyone misunderstood the spec they just got 0's on the performance part of the grade. (I think a lot of students did this because the means were always like 15/40). Anyways, he curves/makes adjustments in order not to fail half of the class. He also grades on area cost (best score is used as baseline), so there was pretty cutthroat competition for about 20% of the grade. Wasn't too sure if I was failing the class or getting an A until the final grades came out, but I guess it worked out. Since you're reading this, I think you should be okay taking this class if you have no other choice. Know what to expect in the last two weeks and start early on the design assignments so you can ask questions about the spec.

To preface this, I've had bad professors before. but Prof. Srivastava is far and away the worst professor I have ever have the displeasure of being instructed by.

- His class grading scheme is needlessly complicated, always leaving you wondering whether your going to pass or not.

- His lectures barley manage to keep me awake, and I was excited to take this class. Half the class even bothers to show up, he's lucky he isn't teaching to an empty room. He also records and uploads his lectures on a "when I feel like it" basis, so good luck if you have time conflict.

- His piazza posts are grating and unhelpful, most of them can be summed up by the line "read the assignment". I find this funny since to receive credit for piazza posts (yes, part of your grade is dependent on being active on piazza) you need to make at least 50 contributions.

- Speaking of dumb requirements, part of your grade is dependent on attending office hours! Office hour attendance and piazza account for 5% of your total grade.

- The first 5 weeks of the quarter had no assignments/homework to speak of. I'm usually not one to complain about a lack of homework, so what gives? Well, we still had to do a full quarters worth of work (what would the class be graded on?), just dumped in the last 4 weeks, and further concentrated in the final 2 weeks of instruction. What a great way to end off the year!

- His quizzes (some might call them midterms) are unreasonably difficult. Expect the average to be around a 30 to 40%. You won't receive any partial credit for large, multipart questions (obviously). I guess the only saving grace about these quizzes is that they are online and curved. But really, being online is just more justification for making the quizzes even more difficult.

- The design assignments, or really design assignment, was honestly the only part of this class I almost enjoyed. It probably would have been more fun if it wasn't dropped at the end of the quarter, without ANY prior experience in the design software we where meant to use. The single design assignment was supposed to be 2 assignments done throughout the quarter, so that we could gain some experience with the design software before trying the hard stuff. But it wasn't.

- The final was so ridiculously hard, I barely made it out with a working solution. If I hadn't taken multiple CS classes beforehand I don't think the assignment would have been possible. Luckily, your grade is not only dependent on how well you did, but also how well everyone else did! So even if you have a working solution, someone else with a better solution can come along and steal 20% of your grade!

To conclude, I'd like to address the Prof. directly:

Your class sucks, cry about it.

The way this class was taught was deeply flawed. No assignments or homework or anything for the first few weeks and then you get hit with a 1-week project and a quiz. What other reviews said in previous years is right: basically nothing for long spaces of time and then intense projects that take upwards to 20 hours due in a week. This is especially bad during week 10 and finals week. Discussion sections basically teaches you all the material in this class, while lecture just briefly skims over things with no examples. Combine all this with the extreme competitive nature of the class (projects are graded on efficiency, and for project 1 (of 2) if you were more than 10% less efficient than the best design or his, whichever is lower, you start losing points; double the "cost" would mean a 0 on the project even if it is functional) and the class is hell. I really enjoyed the concepts though. Oh also the extremely condescending tone of the professor to any questions asked.

Do not take this class with this professor he is HORRIBLE. His grading policy is absolutely abysmal exactly like the other reviews say. It seems like he is extremely lazy and will not grade quizzes or tests himself and if you want a regrade he will literally brush you off saying you are insulting his intelligence. He is very stubborn and quite frankly should not be teaching this course here. He will insult you if you are trying to get an education by asking "dumb" or "silly" questions and again brush you off. If you are looking at your phone in front of him he will call you out saying that you are distracting everyone, however everyone is literally looking at a screen. DO NOT TAKE THIS CLASS WITH THIS PROFESSOR HE IS HORRIBLE!

worst thing you could do to yourself is take this class with Mani. I honestly learned a lot (but could have learned the same thing in a better manner) but his class format and everything is so mentally draining.