Although the class is poorly structured and definitely way too much work, I have to say I appreciate how I was taught to learn the material: with the steep learning curve from covering new topics every week. I am currently in my first software engineering internship and I have to say that the thought process from 35L has allowed me to acclimate to the steep learning curve of the tech stack used in the company I am interning at.

The assignments are tough since everything is new; I suggest to go through fire and take cs33 too at the same time (I did this plus cs33 Eggert): this is because later on, the linking and threads concepts overlap between these two classes.

For the final, it is luck as your TA writes it. I would suggest printing TA slides, assignments (using small font like 4 point font), ascii table, emacs reference card, regex cheat sheet, and Computer Systems: A Programmer's Perspective (literally, the CS33 textbook). Again, go through fire and take cs33 too since I wouldn't have been able to answer some questions on the final had I not learned it in cs33 or has the book as reference.

Good luck, and I came to UCLA with ZERO programming experience and I was able to pull an A going through 10 weeks of fire and suffering. You can do this; just put in ALOT of work! I certainly think it is very helpful for internships and software engineering in general.

Paul Eggert is a good professor. Understanding his lecture is a challenge but you will learn a lot from his lectures. He is just very knowledgeable and has so much to say about computer system. His test is hard, and sometimes you will find it what the hell the question is asking. I personally like the way he constructs the test, because I think in general, his test is testing on how well you can use what you already know about computer system and apply to his problem, so as long as your answer is making sense to the problem, you will get most of the points. Another reason is when the test is too hard , everyone is on the same boat, you don't have to worry about that half of the class is gonna score 70~80 above, because when you feel like you do horrible and half of the class is gonna feel the same way. My advice: read the book !!!!! it is gonna save your life!

It's honestly been a while since I've taken this class, so I can't really give a really detailed overview of what the class was like. However, I would highly recommend taking Operating Systems with Eggert because he really knows his stuff. His philosophy towards software, his passion, his humour... I really think he's the embodiment of what all prospective software engineers should aspire to be.

So, I would recommend Eggert because he's a really awesome person and you learn the most by being around awesome people. That being said, Eggert is not exactly the best "teacher" per se and he will use a lot of computer science terms without bothering to define them and sometimes, his lectures will be really hard to follow because his knowledge of the material trumps your knowledge of the material a thousandfold. Also, the class is a lot of work and maybe a little overwhelming at times.

However, as Professor Eggert frequently emphasizes, a lot of software is about tradeoffs. In the situation here, what you're trading for your "free" time, unimportant hobbies, and uninspiring social life is an opportunity to learn a very cool subject at the steepest learning curve possible. I would say that's a worthwhile trade.

Edit: Also, I took this class back in Winter 2015, which is the last class based on the old curriculum. The labs have been changed decently so the class might not be the same experience as before.

Seriously the worst professor I have ever had in this school(though it's my first year in UCLA..)
1.He requires a crazy amount of reading prior to each lecture(ranging from around 40 pages to around 100 pages). The book is almost all plain text, with very little graphical illustrations, no highlight and no summary. And it's dry and convoluted. But the professor just assumes you read all the stuff in advance and have a very good understanding about it. Otherwise there is no f*cking way you can understand things from his lectures!
2. As I said it's very hard to follow him during his lectures, but the worse part is that it's even harder to go through his lecture materials after class. Unlike Smallberg his lectures are not podcasted and unlike Nachenberg he has no slides. All he does in class is writing down messy and unorganized notes. And when you go back to try to study from your notes, you will just get completely lost!
3.The exams are ridiculously hard and irrelevant to what what we saw and did in the book.
4. Oh and there are the awful labs... Mostly irrelevant to the lectures, and super hard. Honestly it asks you to find and fix bugs in some long and convoluted codes. It also requires you to have a very solid background in C and GDB, non of which we have covered in depth in lectures.
5. The TAs are horrible. Sometimes when you ask questions to the TAs the TAs won't even know the answers. Also the office hours for the TAs are poorly organized. Most of them will have office hours on the same day, or even at the same time period. Sometimes before the midterms or project dues you won't even be able to find a TA for help.
6. Feel like the piazza platform will be more effective if the professor himself can actually participate in answering students' questions:)

In summary, the sloppiest, laziest and most unorganized professor I've ever seen! He absolutely puts no effort in ensuring that students can actually learn from his class. I don't know why people will say they learn much more from Eggert's class??? Feels like I don't learn anything from him(I don't think that's bc I'm too dumb though since I got As in my Maths, Physics and CS31,32 with ease.) So PLZ dooooo avoid him if you can. He will be your absolutely worst nightmare! Trust me!

This class was so hard. I think most CS majors don't expect hardware stuff and so the material is completely brand new. Tests and lab 1 was overkill, the other stuff was ok. Read the book, as I barely went to class and just read the book and did ok.

Eggert is infamous for a reason; his exams are ridiculously difficult! The class average for the first midterm was 30% despite open-note open-book policy. Every time I walked out of an Eggert exam, I felt like I had been grilled on information that hadn't been noted on the study materials. They were a terrible experience, and jarring after reasonable-feeling Smallberg exams. If Eggert didn't curve his class, he'd probably have four or five students pass out of sixty.

His projects were okay, but the specs of the projects were very unclear. Students took to Piazza to ask TAs over 20 questions per project, just to clarify what Eggert was grading at all.

Eggert's lectures are boring and difficult to follow, but necessary for the class. He doesn't release slides or notes. Make sure you read the textbook before going to class.

Overall, I got the feeling that Eggert is truly brilliant as a computer scientist, but that he assumes all his students are equally brilliant and can quickly comprehend what he says (or read between the lines if they don't). As a result, he's not a good professor at all, despite his obvious mastery of computer systems and programming.

Much better than Eggert's CS 33. Concentrate in class, and you will learn a lot.

As someone who watched friends take 131 with Millstein, it blows my mind that Eggert's 131 class fulfills the same requirement as Millstein's. In short, 131 with Eggert is dramatically more time consuming and challenging than with Millstein. The projects in this class are incredibly difficult due to the strangely vague specs, the lack of consistency between what's taught in lecture and what's required in the projects, and the amount of time these projects take. Be prepared to spend anywhere from 15-30+ hours a week on this class, depending on the current week's project. One positive note about the projects is the incredible help we get from the TAs. These are some of the best TAs I've had in all of my time here.

Professor Eggert was a terrible lecturer. He did not have a clear outline and often meandered off into meaningless in-depth side topics that barely anyone could understand.

It's not too difficult to receive a good grade in that class, but that never meant he was actually good at teaching me anything. His tests were not directly relevant to the class material and were honestly a measure of how well you could bs the answer.

Don't be fooled by other positive reviews from people who thought he was a good teacher after receiving a good grade. His only job is to teach yet he does it very poorly. Comparing him to Smallberg or Nachenberg, he is in a separate lower league.

This class is a lab... and it is curved based on the section. I ended up with a smart section unluckily and got a raw score of 88%. The final was apparently too easy...

I would say the concepts are very useful but the course is still poorly structured despite the changes including use of Beaglebone for one of the assignments. It is just that there is not really any real way to learn these concepts unless you practice using these tools outside of class. People who are familiar with Python and git will probably be in an advantage over the others just because there are just some things that if you are a beginner, you just won't know. You just won't suddenly master the nuances of a particular tool over one week - years of software engineering experience, or at the very least experiences with multiple side projects, will fare you better in learning these tools than reading the manual or something of that kind.