Beginners beware. The learning curve is harsh and the class is demotivating. I wouldn't say don't take the class, but I do recommend you steel yourself.

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.

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!

Terrible professor, even at the start of the class he joked that he had bad reviews because students are lazy. This is NOT the case. I received a C- even though all of my assignments worked for all edge cases, and were fully commented. I was one of the students that almost everyone went to for debugging their assignments, especially during the later part when assignments got hard. Tests are very niche on concepts that aren't covered extensively during the lectures. Would never recommend Lindstrom.

Although I helped everyone finish every project, I still got a C- in the class. Final/midterm were very unrepresentative of the material learned and asked niche questions. Super hard grader on homework aswell.

He is the kind of professor that you would deeply remember even you graduated, a kind of professor that would appear in your nightmare even you have left college for years. His lectures are super dry but loaded, trying to cram an intense load of concepts in your brain. He doesn't really care about the correctness and functionality of the program compared to rather meaningless syntax requirements. He will heavily punish you if you violated his requirements. Programming is torture in his class. RUN!

Terrible professor, programs can work 100% (including edge cases & commenting), and you will get C's if coding syntax isn't 100% correct. His monotone voice is far superior for sleeping than learning. Took online and would not recommend him to anyone.

This was the hardest class I have ever taken in my life. I ended up dropping it week 8 because i was going to fail it. i constantly got low scores on the homeworks even if the code functioned almost perfectly. my friend who has been a cs major for years couldn't figure out the weekly homeworks. For an intro class, this course was so beyond unreasonable. I think the professor enjoys feeling powerful and authoritarian while assigning homeworks that are nearly impossible. He's super condescending and expects you to understand things perfectly after explaining it once. Lectures are boring and monotone. He doesn't give enough examples that actually explain the concepts. Instead, he reads off of plain slides. TAKE THIS CLASS WITH LITERALLY ANYONE ELSE. I didn't learn a single thing besides how to cry myself to sleep without my roommate hearing.

Professor Lindstrom is great! No midterms and the final is only 5% of this class. Homework is most part of this course, which is reasonable. Work hard and you will learn a lot