This class was unnecessarily chaotic. Our “midpoint quiz” was supposed to be a simple diagnostic test but ended up being more complicated and ambiguous in description than any of my actual midterms. The easier (and clearest) questions were filled with trivia like “Who invented [something random here]” or “What is x?” given JavaScript code, having no relevance to actual web application knowledge and reminiscent of an alternate reality where CS31 is taught in JavaScript.

The professor would also do something sneaky about the projects. He would set up a poll at 11 PM a day before the project was due asking if the deadline should be extended, and then make a decision within 1-3 hours. Given that the only people active on Campuswire were those still working on the project, the deadlines were extended for another week (2 out of 3 times). We were supposed to have 5 projects, beginning with HTML/CSS and finishing with a full-stack application using a framework like React, but because of this, we ended up only doing 3 projects (4th one being optional and assigned Week 9 Thursday), and the scope of them was HTML/CSS/JavaScript with no framework at all. Project 4 does introduce Express/MongoDB, but introducing backend in a web app class at the end of Week 9 is concerning.

Onto the projects themselves, they were very doable, but the ambiguous specs made them stressful because it was often unclear what he wanted. It did not help that the professor usually responded with some variation of “Follow the spec.” (at first) and you could not ask the TAs any project-related questions because he would gatekeep the grading rubric from them.
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Project 1:
- He wanted us to write about 3 significant features of HTML and CSS, anything not covered in lecture, but the slides had pretty much everything important to these languages, so we had to put something esoteric or tangential to HTML/CSS to get points.
- This project was graded wrong for everyone. Upon regrade request, my score went from 87% to a 100%.
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Project 2:
- There was heavy debate about what he meant by “No description”, and this was never clarified until after the due date.
- We were supposed to use Google Cloud, but it was impossible to set up based on the instructions.
- Points were lost for not making the final product screenshot, despite it being outdated. Things like removing the default cards, not using sans-serif font, and/or adding new features could get you to lose 10 to 30 points out of 100, even if you met all the functional requirements in the spec.
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Project 3:
- Doing one of the extra credits from Project 2 prevented you from doing the one in Project 3, leading to unfairness in scores.
- We were supposed to fix linting and console errors, but the “io” 404 / linting error had different behavior locally and on GCloud, so it would be impossible to solve it on both, leading to hours of wasted time and frustration. Keep in mind this was on instructor-provided code.
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Overall, I would not recommend this professor for first-time/revived courses, given his stubbornness towards grading, unclear specs he will not rewrite, and terrible pacing. It sucks that this is his legacy, because he is a great lecturer, and curves overall grades well.

Very very helpful class and material. CS143 + CS144 pretty much covers the basics for full stack software engineering. The biggest pro of Rosario's classes is that it is packed with information, so you can learn a lot from him. He is able to convey his ideas clearly, but I think one potential problem is that some examples in his slides could cause confusion for a beginner, but he might not be aware of it (as someone who already understands the knowledge). This requires a little more effort from you to understand and do some minor research, but I would say it's definitely worth it considering the amount of knowledge you will gain.
Regarding previous comments, I agree that Rosario has a problematic personality. In particular, his biggest problem is his pride / ego; apart from that, he appears to be mostly rational. Nevertheless, I don't see why this should affect the rating of his course. His primary job as a professor is to pass on the knowledge, and the primary job of me as a student is to receive this knowledge; and I think he has done a well-above-average job in doing so. In terms of personality, Rosario has his own journey that he should work on, so is everyone. I don't see why we should be concerned for him.

Just a warning this is the professor you are taking this class with:
https://www.reddit.com/r/ucla/comments/1ci3cl8/cs144_campuswire/

TLDR: Rosario tests are always pretty hard and detailed, but he curves generously and the workload is manageable.

I agree with most other reviews that the class was pretty chaotic, but it's mainly because it was the first time in 3 years it had been offered and the professor said from the start it would be a "pilot". The workload is super manageable, 4 projects, a midterm, and a final. The midterm is only 15% and it was advertised as a quiz (unfortunately :() but it was a true midterm that requires a fair amount of understanding of everything covered in lecture. I expect our average to be a lot higher on the final given that people likely studied a lot more. If you do take this class, just be aware that Rosario is not very flexible with regrades UNLESS the graders themselves made a mistake. So make sure you follow the specs to a T and ask for clarifications if you aren't sure about something. I actually liked Rosario, I feel like he really cares about his students and he's willing to help you learn if you show him that you are putting in the effort. Maybe an unpopular opinion, but I found him quite funny, a bit sarcastic, but overall a clear lecturer.

prof loves to include trivia on exams, which was true in 143 and still true now (idk what i expected). projects are very, very easy (i have no experience in web dev) but the spec instructions are very unclear and he gets pretty upset if u ask clarifying questions on campuswire (i did not bother, because i took 143 with him and therefore expected this). final scores are not out yet so who knows what my grade is but i don't think it's hard to do well in this class in general, so long as ur willing to tolerate incredibly stupid questions that do not actually test your understanding of underlying principles. the first cs prof ive ever had who lectures on history and expects u to remember names. My god. Are we in middle school. again it's really not tough to remember this but it does make u question the value of ur own time. In my one wild and precious life i'm making sure i wrote down 1996: Opera released in case rosario pulls that one out next

Just save your sanity by not taking this class. He gives out basically an encyclopedia of material and everything is fair game. During lectures he speaks faster than Ben Shapiro and taking any kind of valuable notes impossible. Exams are a coin flip since questions are based on maybe one word he said about a topic in class. Taking a random Udemy class will teach you way more about Web Applications and Web Development than this whole class.