before I took this course, I used to like programming

This class is going to change your life, but not in a good way. CS 35L is basically a lower division capstone project, and takes up so much of your time. DO NOT take other challenging courses in the same quarter unless you're already familiar with Emacs, Git and a few programming languages.

By change your life, I mean that you will change all your schedules to work around Eggert. Your holidays and free time will be spent working on his homework or project. Say goodbye to a normal study schedule as assignments will probably take longer than you need.

I actually liked Eggert's lectures and he covered some interesting concepts (would be a great guest lecturer). However, it is so out of sync with the homework and project that you will find yourself thinking that the class is broken (I did several times). You have to remember that his lectures are more or less independent of the rest of the class. If the assignment involves coding in Python, don't wait for his Python lecture before starting. Use TA notes and your own knowledge to start projects ASAP, as that's the only way to not fall behind.

The group project at the end is about programming a web app from scratch, which is actually pretty fun if you have a good team. You are free to choose whatever idea and technology stack works for you, and there are lots of tutorials available as needed.

Eggert's exams though... if you have a mindset of aiming to get 100%, it's time to let that go. He makes his exams extremely challenging and long, and a lot of it is computer science theory (meaning answers are paragraphs and it almost seems like a philosophy exam). While you will almost definitely be depressed with your exam scores, remember that Eggert wants a bell curve and tries to use it as needed.

Best of luck, you'll need it

Let me be clear, GitHub and StackOverflow are your teachers in this class. That, and the phrase "20+hrs/week" are all you need to know about this class.

It's almost like a philosophy of programming languages class - Eggert's lectures are engaging, thoughtful, and worth every second of your time. Each lecture is jam-packed with information (not always timely in relation to the projects, unfortunately). Each lecture genuinely feels like a valuable use of your time. You start to really enjoy every second of it. Then you remember it's still an Eggert CS class, and the projects destroy your very soul.

This is not a class to double with another hard class - this is a "take a GE, a moderately hard class (maybe) and another easy major class, then focus most of your efforts on this" kind of class. Projects are insanely difficult. Like insanely. Be prepared to sink hours of your life each week into them. You're pretty surely going to finish them, but it's going to take some willpower and some sacrifice.

Exams are typical Eggert fare - asking lots of theoretical questions that involve making arguments and backing them up. Honestly, after taking his CS 33, I think I was just more prepared for these, and they didn't seem that bad. Just pay attention in lecture, make sure your notes are well-organized, and present coherent answers to the questions he asks, citing stuff from lecture/discussion. If you're totally lost, find any relevant notes you have for the question, and start writing down key words and concepts in a way that seems like you're at least semi-legitimately trying to answer the question. Generally, that should get you to a B, if not an A, on the exam (after the curve, obviously, only like 4 people got a legit 90+ on these exams).

Yes, this class is stressful. Yes, it's a lot of work. Yes, you'll probably hate it while you're taking it (I know I did at times). However, I think you learn a good amount, and get a great discussion on a lot of the "why's" in CS. Honestly, I wish I'd tried to take every Eggert class I could have. If you have the opportunity to take 131 with him, do it - just make sure you're emotionally prepared to cry over some of your half-baked attempts at mutually recursive grammar parsing functional language nonsense.

Be warned! This class is nothing like other lower-div classes such as CS31 and 32. I aced CS 31-33 but failed miserably in this class. CS97 and probably CS35l require a higher level of ability of self study and conquering problems on your own.

Special shoutout to Tang Mohan for being the most useless and careless TA of all time. Good job for not explaining jackshit and talking down on students who want to get clarity for the most convoluted questions ever written on the exams. You fucking suck.

As the last batch of this class, I find it to be my responsibility to pass on the information of this course to the lurkers who wish to find out what this class was and learn more about the prologue of what is now CS 97.
Quite contrary to many of the other reviewers, I... liked this class. As someone who didn't know CS terminologies and tools out of the box, like git, bash, text editors, etc, I find this to bring me up to speed with what a lot of people come into college knowing in CS.
I did the projects 100% on my own, and it was worth it. I learned so much from this course. Yes the topics were split up by week, completely different from the other so it seemed quite disorganized, but as Professor Eggert would put it, this class is to help you learn how to learn. In that respect, this class achieved the objective.
The final was 50% of the grade which sucked but it's a great excuse to make sure that you know your stuff well when you exit the class. Because, well, CS 111 will kick your ass harder if you don't know stuff from this one.
The course was also a stage for Professor Eggert to flex about his Emacs contributions and GNU Linux contributions. You'll see his name on the command line more than you'll ever see it in class (it is TA-led, after all) and half of the answers to the assignment questions had his name popping around somewhere or the other.
Well, I must say that there are two reasons that this class was significantly more mangeable and merrier than previous batches. Primarily, we had an autograder, so we kinda knew our scores on submitting and could ask TAs on and off about which test cases we weren't hitting. Secondly, it was online, so the final exam format was that you have the internet and the servers to your disposal when attempting the exam, and you're kinda expected to use it.

Shoutout to Madhu the TA for being awesome in this quarter.

Well, not like this course will be offered again so, adios. Hope you ace CS 97, or whatever CS class that might be the standard software construction lab in the future.

CS35L is probably the hardest class I've taken so far. You have 10+ hours worth of assignments each week, and a huge final project. The midterms and finals were all pretty hard and open ended, although this quarter Eggert experimented with MCQs. That being said, I've learned so much from this course and I genuinely believe that this is the most important computer science course. The skills you learn from this course are super applicable (shell scripting, web dev, maybe not elisp, makefiles, git).

For the midterm and final, I suggest having super detailed notes that you can copy down in the exam. Make sure to understand the bigger ideas and how different topics link together.

For the final project, try to find a good team and START EARLY.

I think I learned a lot from this course, but at the expense of my mental health unfortunately. The lectures are a bit all over the place in terms of organization, and it is sometimes difficult to know what are the essential concepts to take away from a lesson are. I do appreciate the professor's enthusiasm and extensive domain knowledge on the subject, and his little tidbits and asides kept the lectures from being dull. He is also really good at addressing questions that are brought up during lecture and is approachable in that regard. Overall, the lectures were very informational, but not very digestible. Sometimes the "bigger picture" was lost in the focus on minute details.

The homework/projects, on the other hand, are an utter mess. I wish I was being hyperbolic. The assignments are written in a way that almost seems like they are intentionally trying to be confusing and frustrating for students. I quickly learned that there is very little point in starting the homework before discussion section because it is simply not worth my time to decipher (and probably misinterpret) the assignment. Luckily, the TAs are great in filling the gaps in this respect, but their absolute necessity to make any meaningful progress on the assignments is very telling of their quality. Keeping updated on every Piazza post is a must to not lose points on arbitrary requirements that were mentioned vaguely, if at all in the assignment. For example, the Scheme parsing assignment is nearly impossible to complete by just reading the very open-ended specifications -- you almost have to code against the already additional sample test cases provided by the TAs to have a chance to do well or spend hours writing code to handle edge cases at random. This was especially frustrating because new test cases would be updated multiple times throughout the assignment period, though I am at least thankful they existed to make up for the shortcomings of the specification.

The stress of these assignments that many students complain about come from this dispiriting experience of programming based on assumptions that they are forced to make while waiting on TA's to confirm/deny via Piazza. It is sad to say that it is actually a viable strategy to wait for these Piazza clarification posts before starting the assignment. Overall, even though the assignments could be better formulated, I did feel like I learned a lot about the different programming styles by completing them. It's just a shame that my experience had to be this way, and although I think the TAs did a great job considering these circumstances, the course should be able to stand on its own.

did not actually take this class but it fully fucked my friend. prayers up for my billah boys