I loved taking PIC 10A with Michael and would take it again with him if I had the chance. I had no programming experience before this class other than a little bit of self-taught MATLAB, but I managed to pull through in the end with an A+ because Michael was that good at teaching us how to program with C++.
The homework assignments were fair and built directly off of the material from lectures. There were 7 in total. I would say each assignment took somewhere between 1 and 12 hours, with the final assignment taking the longest. Homework comprised 80% of the final grade, while the midterm and final accounted for for 5% and 15%, respectively.
Michael was also extremely quick to respond to my emails whenever I had a question, which I appreciated, and was overall very concerned with student learning since he stopped at certain moments during the lectures to allow students to ask questions. Although his sense of humor didn’t really click with me, he often *tried* to be funny during lecture and even had a few curse-word gaffs because he felt so comfortable talking with us.

Perlmutter's a great prof, can't recommend him enough. The homeworks take some time, but they were always solvable if you understand the code he goes over in lecture (which he posts to CCLE). Though you have to double check that your code works and that you read the problem correctly, as homework is 80% of your grade.

If you have any background in coding this class won't be difficult, and if you don't, you can still get an A if you put in the work (as you have access to notes for all homeworks and tests). He responds to emails quickly if you have a simple question, or you can go to office hours if it's more complicated.

It was clear that this was his first quarter doing the class, as he often modified the homework assignments midway through the week once he noticed that they had small typos or weren't specific enough. Led to me missing a few points once after I used a command we weren't allowed to use, but the homework PDF wasn't modified to say that until after I submitted it. Though this shouldn't be a problem in the future when he does the class again

Michael Perlmutter is a king. He is always available through email, replies quickly, answers questions effectively, and is generally hilarious. The homework is appropriately difficult but if you start early, it shouldn't be a problem to get an A on them. Each homework is worth 10% so if you do all 8, you could get away with not taking the midterm and final. But, I recommend doing them because they are so similar to the homework and each are worth 10%.

Professor Perlmutter is super helpful! I think he is the best coding professor! We have pre-recorded videos posted every week, and he also holds live sessions to address useful real-life cases. I would say this class is not hard at all, as long as you work hard. Weekly homework(8 in total). Weekly live discussion assignments require group work. Same group throughout the quarter, in which the groups are randomly assigned by the professor. Midterm is very easy, we have 36 hours to do it. "The exam is a "90-minute exam," in the following sense: we've written the exam with the intention that, if all students spend 90 minutes on it, then the median exam grade would be around a 90. " Final exam is a bit more complicated, but it can be done in about 2-3 hours. There's a final project about building 3 machine learning models to predict species of penguins. Professor also offers several extra credit options: an extra credit essay, 2 extra credit surveys, and some extra points in the Midterm. I think everyone can do well in this class, even for people with no prior coding experience. Strongly recommend.

Mike's PIC16A is a great class that anyone can take and do well in and this is coming from someone who struggled in PIC10A.

There are 3 lectures every week (flipped classroom format) and after each lecture you take a quiz. The quizzes were my least favorite part of the course as they were poorly worded and often did not test for anything significant. Lectures themselves were great!

You have to attend discussion twice a week and you work with one group (2-3 people) on worksheets which eventually leads to a group project. The assignments were easy but the group project was probably the most disappointing part of the course as instructions were not clear and working with others is always a drag. Mike had to clear up a lot of confusion through multiple emails and on campuswire which to me shows how much he did not consider when making this.

HW makes the biggest portion of your grade and it was the best part of the course. Make sure to utilize his OH if you need help because he is extremely helpful.

I also felt as if the course has too much content toward the end. A lot of it does not tie into the project and kind of feels like its just there.

The class has a lot of issues but it is still a great option and if you ever feel confused just ask Mike for help! Be prepared to work hard but you'll learn a lot.

Rating: 4/5

Easiness: 4
Workload: 3
Clarity: 4
Helpful: 5

Professor Perlmutter is amazing. I am very grateful to have taken my first programming class with him. Although the lecture content itself was fairly clear and straightforward, I definitely struggled on some of the homework assignments. In my experience, sometimes the connection between the course content and the homework tasks was evident but not very clear. Because of this, I usually had to do extra research to solve some of the problems. It seemed like the only students who didn't have trouble with the problems had prior coding experience or they attended office hours. In the beginning, Perlmutter would add hints to the assignments and they were super helpful in terms of making the connection between lecture and homework more clear. However, he kinda stopped doing this once the problems got harder. Honestly, I didn't mind doing extra research since it was beneficial in the long run, but I imagine that some people taking this course may not have the time to so. If you're a beginner like me, this is definitely something to consider if you're taking on a heavy course load or have other time-consuming responsibilities.
Good luck!

Prof. Perlmutter is definitely one of the best professors I've had a UCLA. I had a great experience with him in PIC 10A so I was really excited to have him for PIC 16A. Though I was a little nervous since I struggled in 10A at times, 16A was a breeze in comparison and I personally thought it was more fun. I enjoyed the "applications" portion of the class the most. It was super relevant to current times (e.g. working with COVID data) and it covered many common coding interests (e.g. machine learning). All of the homework assignments and the midterm are very clearly derived from lecture, meaning that there aren't any questions that ask for a really abstract solution. If you watch the mandatory videos you should do well on the assignments. However, watching live lecture or reviewing the notes for it can help you solve some problems. Moreover, as someone mentioned, the quizzes were a bit annoying but it's definitely possible to get an overall A once you consider the generous number of quizzes that are dropped at the end. Now, on the group work: I thought I was going to dread going to discussion twice a week, but my groupmates were both very cooperative and we worked well together. The assignments we did together during discussion were really good practice for implementing the things we learned in lecture. Plus, if you don't like going to discussion, you can just finish the assignment as fast as possible and leave early since the assignments are fairly easy (and graded for completion). The group project wasn't that bad either, especially considering that most of the hard work is done in discussion where you have access to your TA and LAs for help or tips. Also, I think Prof. Perlmutter is super understanding of the various dynamics that can exist in groups and the group projects are therefore graded with this in consideration. So, I wouldn't stress too much if you don't get your dream group. Happy coding!

Programming is usually not my thing. I have learned java and intro to R. But they were very challenging to me and I struggled a lot. Spent hours of time to complete assignments that took others a few minutes. However, Professor Perlmutter made this class truly engaging and really motivates me to learn more. I really love his teaching style, the organization of this class and funny examples. I had Talon as TA. His sections was very fun and interactive. He comes up with funny examples. He really cares for his students. His sections are super helpful!

Lectures were prerecorded and put on YouTube. Quizzes (low impact) were given for each lecture. Actual lectures were reserved for giving examples of content covered in lectures.
Homework was given weekly and consisted of working through a Jupyter notebook to create code for different scenarios.
Discussions were mandatory.
The midterm was essentially an easier and shorter homework.
There was a large group project based around machine learning which was a significant portion of the grade.
The group project was worth more than the final, which was multiple-choice questions.

Would recommend the class if you have a good work ethic.

I definitely recommend Professor Perlmutter for this class. I came into this class with almost no experience in programming, but thanks to Professor Perlmutter I didn't struggle very much at all. He's really great at explaining the more difficult concepts and making them intuitive. Lecture was also pretty engaging and it felt more natural to participate in class compared to other Zoom lectures.

Homework makes up 80% of your grade. The midterm and final are worth 5% and 15% and you are given multiple days to work on them. Both lecture and discussion are recorded. Lecture attendance is mandatory if you are in the continental US, but discussion is optional.