I went into this class with zero coding experience and I think that may have been a mistake. Maxwell is an awesome and wholesome dude; you can tell he cares about his students' success. However, this class was HARD. It went from 0 to 100 real quick and the homework assignments would have me sobbing on the floor of my dorm. Anyway, I barely finessed an A in the course because of extra credit. But be warned -- if you're like me and are going into this class with no prior knowledge or experience with coding, it will be difficult and this class will pose as a learning curve.

Like the other reviews have mentioned, the professor and TA are both wonderful and super helpful in lectures, discussions, questions, etc. There are pretty much infinite ways you can earn extra credit. That being said, MATLAB isn’t easy and the coursework does escalate in difficulty pretty quickly.

A very easy coding class with a great professor. Even my TA was great. Definitely recommend.

Overall, this class is honestly extremely easy. You will need to learn some basic programming but if you already know some it should be almost no work. Even if you don't, it shouldn't take more than a few hours to learn what for loop is. A ridiculous amount of extra credit was provided. Ended with over 110%.

If you have no previous coding experience or consider yourself a "bad" coder, then I cannot recommend anyone more highly than Max Mansolf. I am a returning student, and have had some negative experiences with previous coding courses, so I had a lot of anxiety when I began this quarter. He went out of his way to reiterate certain ideas and go into detail so that I could understand. He also had an online forum for students to post questions, and answered almost all of them within 24hrs. He also gives abundant extra credit, so that even if you are struggling at certain points in the course, you have a chance to make it up. He explicitly stated that his goal is to have students learn to code and that he had no desire to punish anyone for struggling. He is approachable and funny, and I can easily say that of all the courses I have taken at UCLA, this was my favorite. I actually enjoy coding now!