This is one of my absolute favorite classes I’ve taken at my time here at UCLA. Don’t get me wrong - the material is very, very hard and I’m a very, very below-average student. But Meka teaches in a way that is very well-structured and thorough. Being remote this quarter was a challenge for all my professors, but he provided very clear (if a bit hard to read) notes, reasonable homework and tests, and very well-written and fast answers on campuswire.

This is such a great class. Contrary to the official course title, the main focus of the class is not finite automata. Meka has revised the curriculum to talk about "theory of computation" as a whole, and some of the ideas/ theorems we discussed were honestly mindblowing. The textbook is very modern and completely free online.

There are two midterms and a final. I personally found the exams to get progressively more difficult, although that's probably due to the nature of the material. Overall, they are fair. Make sure to study the class notes, as there are always a few questions that basically require you to recite key ideas. One final note: the exams are timed over Zoom, so I imagine they would be similar to in-person

Excellent class and excellent professor.

Prof Meka adapted well to teaching in a covid remote learning environment, his live zoom lectures were generally well prepared and engaging. Exams and homeworks were challenging but fair, and the questions generally posed on them were interesting.

Overall I can say I learned a lot this quarter from him and recommend him and this class.