I am sorry that I cannot give Michael a higher rating... His rating should be around 3.5 if he doesn't keep the Canadian tradition of terribly difficult tests with very friendly curves.

If he ends up at UCLA CS dept I think he will be better off... PIC is really not a place where expert programmers go to.

The grade distribution for Winter 2021 was thus:

5 A's
15 A-'s
2 B+'s
3 B's
1 C-

If you take this course, pray.....and then make sure you triple check your homework against the homework codes. I pulled off an A with no previous coding knowledge (except pic 10a with a different, much easier professor) and getting 20s on homeworks really came in clutch. I think I learned a ton but this was the most anxiety inducing time of my life. Mike got our final grades out within a day of the last hw submission, though, so....thank you king...

I feel I gained a lot from this class. You do learn a lot of languages. However, Professor Lindstrom was completely unrealistic and lacking empathy in his structuring of the course, especially in terms of test schedules and workload; it's as if he assumed his class was the only one we were taking. In the final 2 weeks of the course we had a unit test, a homework due, the final project due, our final project presentations, and the final exam. Just stay on top of stuff because his sweet, helpful demeanor is totally undercut by his ludicrous expectations of his students. Yes he curves the hell out of it at the end, but the stress of those last 2 weeks makes that irrelevant. The final exam average was 43%. I don't understand why he doesn't just restructure the course so that people don't fail everything and he doesn't have to curve it so much.

You'd better not take his course, otherwise your upcoming quarter can be tough and to some extent, much more unpredictable. So make a decision carefully.
Basic info: The possibility of gaining an A in his course is slightly larger than zero only when you exhaust yourself. There are innumerable ways that can make you down, and when you find yourself physically and mentally trampled due to high pressure and heavy workload, it is already too late.
If you are a novice and have no expectations on GPA (or your GPA is high enough to withstand a B), please feel free to take his course. As a novice, you do learn things in his course, but the price is also high: you have to give up your spare time; you have to read his intricate and tedious notes instead of textbooks; you have to communicate with a TA at a high frequency to gain an acceptable score in each HW; you have to stay strong because of his harsh requirement and fast pace... Success does need efforts, but torturing oneself like this is definitely an unwise choice.
Also, your TA matters so much in this course. There are good and bad TAs, though. If you meet a nice one, then congrats; if a bad one, then good luck.
In the end, if you are really talented or think my words are absurd, you can always challenge yourself. Then you will LEARN far more than you can imagine: not only C++ language. That's all for now.

Do not take this class unless you have a lot of prior experience with C++. Homework takes 20+ hours every week past week 3, talking is not allowed at all during lecture, and the grading scheme is extremely harsh even for trivial mistakes. Do yourself a favor, take PIC classes with someone else, and save your grades.

And someone commented on this before, but he should really teach in the CS department. PIC is designed to teach some coding for math majors, not for computer science geniuses.

This is no easy introductory class especially if you take it with this guy, unless you have experience in programming His homework are ridiculously tough and always go beyond what were covered in lectures, requiring an absurd amount of time. The distribution of the class materials is also uneven. It started off so simple in the first few weeks but then the workload and class materials grew exponentially towards the end. The time given for the mini midterms were also nowhere near enough and the instructions can be unclear at times. This class stressed me out countless times. Would really NOT recommend taking it.

You will not finish the quizzes after the third one. They're really hard as are the exams. If you don't have experience in programming before coming into this class, you probably won't get higher than a B-. This class is really hard. Don't think it will be an easy intro class.

I wanna start out saying I took this class during the COVID-19 Pandemic so this may not be reflective of the actual course in class. With that said, I really enjoyed PIC 40A. I had a little prior experience with HTML which made the learning curve a tad easier but overall I think it is a really good course. You definitely learn a lot and I think there are a bit of pacing issues. He tries to squeeze SQLite3 in there at the last week which isn't terrible but I don't think it gives justice to databases. Overall the breakdown for the course was as follows:
78% HW (6 assignments - Lowest one dropped [changed to lowest two dropped because of BLM])
20% Participation (Graded on completion and effort and 90% raw score warrants a 100% in this category)
2% Final!

He has to be the most accomodating and nicest professors I have ever had even giving us an extension on HW 4 which I thought was the hardest assignment. His homework assignment and participation activities really make you internalise and think about the material and are very fair. Be warned that sometimes I would spend about 30 hours on a HW assignment and there is a noticeable difficulty spike around week 6-7. You don't need to look any additional methods up and all the notes were posted. I stopped going to lecture because the class was 8am and everything was recorded and posted to CCLE.

In terms of Office Hours, he is very helpful and would highly encourage people to take advantage of them.

Our TA was pretty good and knew what he was talking about. I don't think he necessarily made a big impact on teaching me new material but he did clarify somethings and was willing to help during his office hours.

Overall, I would HIGHLY recommend taking this class and is one of the only classes where I can clearly see that the material I learned will directly help me in the industry.

Do and don't be afraid of Professor Lindstrom. Do because his homework is incredibly difficult (I spent an average of 12 hours per week on each assignment). Don't because he is one of the most helpful teachers I've ever had. He cares so much about his students' learning and answers literally any question you pose (whether related to programming or not). I love this guy. I would definitely take this class again with him. I feel like I've learned a lot from him. He's also super sweet. He made our final worth only 2% because of the math department's policies about little accommodations. He really cares about you!

Mike is an excellent professor. Sure, he's pretty strict at times and he will take it very seriously if you try to scribble a few words the moment he calls time on a quiz, mid-term or final. He will not hesitate to give you a zero on the quiz if he catches you writing after the time is up.

That being said though, Mike is also extremely helpful in many ways. He constantly scours the CCLE forums and makes it a point to answer every single one of his students' questions. It's probably the best way to seek clarification. Some of my friends have said that going to his office hours may not help much because of the lack of hands-on that you get on the computer, and he might find it difficult to explain concepts to you without the help of the actual computer.

Mike is pretty entertaining during lecture, showing us cute videos and pictures of cats. His mid-terms and finals are challenging, though they definitely can be done. Just remember to skip the portions where he talks about his Canadian culture and cats because it would be a waste of time to read during an exam.

One thing that he does is group exams so that everyone has a chance to get better grades by redoing each exam in teams, which actually helps pull up our grades by a WHOLE LOT (especially if you have a friend who is a computer whiz in the same class as you). He doesn't have extra credit, but it isn't necessary because he gives a very high percentage on participation and homework so that all you have to do is put in the effort and learn consistently, and you should be able to get a good grade!

Definitely recommend this professor as he is patient enough to slowly explain difficult concepts in lectures and in the PIC LAB! I really enjoyed his course!