Professor Meka was one of the BEST professors I have had in the CS department! I think he did a great job teaching this class remotely. The course structure was changed this quarter and was more about "Theoretical Computer Science" than what it was before. The content was always very interesting and often times mind blowing, especially near the end of the quarter when we covered uncomputability, TM, and proved Godel's Incompleteness Theorem!! Coming into this course, I had no idea what TCS is about and even though I am not that interested in the field, I still find the class very interesting.

This class is full of proofs and you won't write a single line of actual code (aside from pseudo-code). Proofs are difficult, but with Professor Meka's great explanations, it becomes somewhat manageable. All the HW are proof-style questions that re-empahsizes concepts taught in class. About half of the questions will be somewhat doable if you attended lecture, but there will always be VERY HARD questions on the HW that I couldn't figure out on my own even if I were to stare at the question the whole day. Even so, the TAs were extremely helpful!! They would often give hints to difficult HW questions during discussion and if you need more help, you could always go to OH where they go over the HW questions in detail until you understand them. S/o to TA Hadley and Shawn!

There were 3 non-cumulative exams throughout the quarter (including the final). The exams were increasing more difficult and I would say that the final was really hard (but still doable imo). Even though, I only did well on the first exam, and scored about average on the latter two exams, I was still able to get an A. I think there is a nice curve.

Compare to my friends who took it in previous quarters with the old course structure, I would say this class is definitely **harder than before**, but you will definitely learn A LOT more than ppl in previous quarters did. So, I 100% recommend taking this class with Meka!! You will have a great time and learn a lot :)

meka is amazing. his lectures are super insightful and genuinely thought provoking. i came in expecting to hate 181 but it ended up being one my favorite ucla cs classes. his exams aren't necessarily easy but i felt that they were fair.

biggest tips for success in the class:
1. do all of the practice exams since your exams will have a similar structure
2. do the practice problems on the hw to the best of your ability. even if you can't do them completely on your own, make sure you understand the solutions. a similar problem usually comes up on the exam!

One time I asked a question after class and the next class he brought up my question to the whole class, saying that it was a good question and sharing the answer with the entire class. I'm still living on that high. Anyways, Prof Meka is great and presented the material of this class very well. His explanations are very clear and he welcomes student questions. Definitely take this class if you are even slightly interested in the more theoretical side of CS!

Prof Meka is a legend. Dude is super passionate about Theoretical Computer Science, and does a fantastic job of channeling that passion every lecture. Theoretical CS is kind of an oddity among the rest of the CS classes, so the material can be difficult to grasp at times. However, Meka goes slowly and methodically, and makes it much easier on the class.

Homeworks were easy for the first half of the quarter and got kinda obscure towards the end, but overall not super time consuming. He uses a 3 midterm approach, with each midterm considerably more difficult than the last. I know everybody wants this class with Sherstov but I have no regrets taking it with Meka.

I initially thought Meka would be a pretty boring lecturer based on the first class but I was happily surprised. The lectures ended up being really interesting and it was easy to tell that he was passionate about what he was teaching. His tests were fair and he provided 3 yrs of practice exams and additional hw problems which were very helpful for the exams (many problems were similar to the practice). There were 3 non-cumulative exams (instead of a midterm and a final) so if you didn't do well on one of them you could still make it up on the next ones. HW was manageable and lectures were recorded. The content was occasionally dense but it's a theory class so that's to be expected. Overall, Meka was a great prof to take this class with.

Meka is a great professor. 181 is definitely a hard class but somehow Meka made this class extremely enjoyable. His OHs are great and he explains everything really well. For the midterms and final, the best way to study is literally just going to his OH and do the practice problems with him. Or just simply be there and listen to what other people are asking. The 1 hr OH is somehow the most productive studying sesh ever.

This is by far the worst professor and class I have had at UCLA. Meka may seem like a nice guy on the surface but he does not by any means prioritize student's best interests in his classes. He believes that his class is the most important thing in your life and that he is upholding a high academic reputation for his class by being a d**k about grades. A classic example is one time the TA lost a students hw assignment, he gave the scores out on a Friday before a final, and when the student complained about the 0 on Saturday and asked for a regrade he told him no because he deemed it too close to the final exam.

HW assignments are graded extremely harshly. You will spend hours doing them and then get destroyed during the grading. If you try to reason with Meka and complain about your grade, he will not help you out.

Bottom line is that if you dislike yourself and would like to make your algorithms experience as terrible as possible, go ahead and take Meka. I actually hated this class more than 111 with Eggert, which is really saying something.

The time-consuming homework assignments left a bad taste in many people's mouths. They primarily involved providing an appropriate algorithms for particular scenarios and proving their correctness, time and space complexity. Many people felt the grading was inconsistent, but that reflects more on the grader than the professor. Solutions to each homework was provided, so after one or two assignments, it was more clear what was expected from us. Although I spent multiple hours on each assignment, in many cases, coming up with the algorithms did not take nearly as much time as articulating the proofs clearly and thoroughly. I ended up with a high grade in the class, but I definitely didn't feel significantly more prepared for tech interviews as advertised.

The lectures were clear. The algorithms and proofs he presented in class all seemed to make sense. The homeworks were extensions of these algorithms and proofs. Sometimes the extension was a little too far, which made the homeworks pretty difficult and time-intensive. You learn what he expects after the first assignment's solutions are posted. I think a lot of people aren't used to the rigorous proofs he expects, which made them unhappy with the course. I would agree that I would've rather written some code for these algorithms instead of worrying about the proofs so much.

The exams were easier than the homeworks (as you would expect, since the homeworks took so long). If you understand what you did on the homeworks or at least why the solutions posted are correct, the exams should be pretty straightforward and you should get a pretty good grade.

Meka has made the course workload and exam difficulty very reasonable since he last taught it in 2015. Textbook is not needed, just focus on lecture slides which are posted online, and homework sets. Sometimes in lectures Professor Meka goes over complex proofs (such as runtime of Quicksort/Quickselect) but he generally does not give exam questions on these.