I went into this class with a year of prior coding experience so I thought I would be okay but man, I had to work really hard for that A-. In the beginning, the class and homework assignments were not that bad, but I believe it was homework 4 took me SUCH a long time to figure out. We also do graphics which even CS 31 does not learn because graphics in C++ is just inefficient and rather ugly and no one uses C++ for that reason.
Salazar was a genuinely nice person when you went into office hours but his lectures were long and boring, causing me to fall asleep on multiple occasions. He mumbles a lot which made it very difficult to follow on.
Overall, do not recommend the teacher, but would recommend the class if you just want some programming experience.

I'm just repeating what's been expressed much more succinctly than I could ever hope to do, but in summary, if I didn't have a coding background/prior knowledge from researching the technical side of video games (I know, I'm a nerd), I would've been so screwed. Halfway through the quarter, I gave up on taking notes and just went to discussions, and I learned so much more in discussion than lectures. He kept going off slides and discussing weird technical aspects that I still cannot tell you how they work.

He basically never used the textbook, so I'm never getting that money back.

He tries teaching C++ classes through graphics, but see literally any other review here for why that's terrible. (Tl;dr, it's clunky, weird, and inefficient.)

The one thing I have to contribute to what's already been said is that Prof. Salazar never uploaded any of our homework grades. As in, any. The quarter has since ended and my homework from week 1 has yet to be entered into the grade book.

Also, the tests suck. The average on the midterm was in the mid 60's, with 4 people scoring above a 90%, and I only managed that because I've had coding experience. If I didn't have a coding background, I would've been screwed.

Overall, nothing really new to add to the general consensus that this is an overall mediocre and disorganized class.

If you're astrophysics or just want to take this class to learn coding don't take this class. Or if you're really interested in computer science and want to learn coding well, also don't take this class. Salazar is pretty competent at coding, but he doesn't know how to teach it. If I hadn't come into the class with a coding background I would have been screwed. He focuses on graphics with C++ which is useless, and doesn't go over the basics for people who don't understand computer languages (binary, processing, etc). If you already know how to code, this class is easy and fine, if not, save yourself the pain and find a better professor.

He is a good person, his slides are good and self-explanatory. He can be ambiguous some times. But overall he is okay so I'll take him again.

He is very helpful. He answers email promptly but he assigns lengthy and confusing assignments. They can be interesting or dull depending on your mood. He is in constant effor to teach you about Mexican culture ( both inlectures and homework assignments) .

His midterms are super challenging especially considering the short time you have. He likes to test you on technical terms which I detest so badly. And also it is hard to review for the exams since he like to tets on minutiae.

Doable ( many extra credits and curves) but not recommended.

Do not take this class with salazar..

Okay, so you know what sucks? When people around you tell you that PIC 10A is supposed to be an "easy" class and by the time you take your first midterm in Salazar's, you walk out feeling dejected because you never expected the tests to have such trickery in them. Let me tell you the reality behind it all.

There are two grading schemes.
25% HW, 20% Midterm 1, 20% Midterm 2, 35% Final
25% HW, 30% Better Midterm, 44% Final, 1% Participation (which you get by like answering questions, doing stuff on the forums, etc.)

The homework assignments are programming assignments. A couple of them have like 4 possible points of extra credit you can get, but honestly these things aren't bad at all. Make sure you test them in the PIC lab or else you'll get a 0 for the assignment, which CAN be fixed if you fix your program up and do this email process thing.

The first midterm was a sneaky bastard. Its average was the highest out of all the exams (About 70%), but there was this one question that had this BS trick that apparently took so many people by storm, NOBODY ended up getting above 92%.

The second midterm was tough as well. Its average was I think high 60s, but I ended up doing better on it than midterm 1.

The final was the hardest of the three exams, with an average like 1 or 2 percent lower than midterm 2, but I somehow miraculously pulled through on it, getting an A at the end but at the cost of having a happy, non-stressful winter quarter.

The worst part about it is that he tells you that he doesn't curve the class at the start of the quarter, but I sincerely hope that he did (because the exams for my math classes have higher averages and my math classes are still curved). And to rub salt on the wound, he gives less extra credit, proportion-wise, than Virtanen does, but Virtanen has an amazing godlike curve, despite similar grading schemes and exams of comparable difficulty to Salazar's.

...yeah. I just don't have anything to say.

So I think it's pretty clear what my intention is when suggesting whether or not you should take this class with Salazar. But if you ABSOLUTELY HAVE TO, this is what you can do to lessen your pain:

- Learn as many concepts as you can ahead of time. So read through Chapters 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, and 9 in Big C++ while reading some of Chapter 7 to know and understand pointers, and make sure that you play around with coding the material covered in those chapters so that the programming makes sense.
- Talk to your TA's for help and questions. They'll be in the PIC lab on certain days of the week to provide homework help and stuff. These guys really do help. I had William and I'd say he was A-OK.
- Know your key terms and the common coding errors, and have an open mind for the weird tricks and stuff that Salazar might pull on his exams. Literally, he can just change the difficulty of a problem with one line of code or one sentence, so like just make sure you are able to write code swiftly and correctly by doing exercises so that you have a sharper intuition as to how to code and stuff.
- And most importantly, PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE LOOK AT AND STUDY THE PRACTICE EXAMS AND PRACTICE PROBLEMS IN DEPTH! UNDERSTAND THE SOLUTION FOR EACH PROBLEM AND IF YOU CAN'T DO THAT, ASK THE TA'S OR SOMEONE AROUND YOU. THESE WERE ABSOLUTELY CRUCIAL IN HELPING ME GET MY A DESPITE THE SHIT THAT WAS HAPPENING! I can't stress this enough. The practice exams will help you immensely for the actual exams, so don't sleep on them.

So uh yeah. That's basically all I have to say. To all my comrades who were in my class, we did it. It's over. We don't have to worry about it ever again, save for whoever took him for 10B.

P. S. If you've gotten this far, congratulations. Here's something that I think will also help. Salazar's going to mention a little nifty thing at the start of the quarter. So make sure you pay really good attention to that and take detailed notes on "the things that seem like they don't have a purpose in terms of the programming concepts."

I would rate him 0 if bruinwalk allowed me to. I managed an A only because I had 4 years of prior programming experience. But believe this guy redefines 'bad'. He simply does not know how to teach... He is not helpful at all, doesn't particularly cares about students. The best part is yet to come... he exams are extremely hard. Given that he does not know how to teach and that he is pretty much a useless instructor he expects too much from his students. If you think you'll manage think again... trust me this guy is not worth it!

Please do not take this professor for PIC 10a. The first few weeks of class seem alright, but after week 4 the class gets extremely challenging and the professor is absolutely terrible at explaining the concepts. I would highly recommend taking another professor for this class because Salazar does not do a good job at teaching this course.

Please don't take him for PIC 10A, he will screw you over.