Love Bruce!! Super nice with grades and gave us an extra credit quiz worth 30 points. Can tell he is really passionate about computer science and tries really hard to help with all questions that come up. Something new for this quarter was that our 7th project was a open-ended design your own type project which I thought was really nice (adding on to/based on project 6). Overall a super nice professor and would definitely recommend taking CS31 with him over any other professor.
Also discussions aren't mandatory but I would recommend doing the optional worksheets as they are really useful in solidifying your understanding of the concepts.

Professor Huang is a great professor and I would highly recommend taking his course. Throughout the quarter, it was very clear to me that he cares a lot about teaching and the quality of the content that he puts out. His lectures and slides are easy to understand and he's extremely accommodating and willing to help out his students. In addition, there were a ton of useful resources available. In terms of how the course was constructed, the exams and projects were fair and the course ran smoothly!

Huang's an energetic professor who explains things well and evidently cares a lot about his students. He was super understanding with misunderstandings in CCLE and would do his best to clarify things through email or on Piazza. Would recommend if he teaches again

Bruce was the goat. Just triple check your projects and watch his videos 2x speed before tests.

I had cs experience bc I took ap csa but I also had a friend with no cs background but he is an engineer and we both thought this class was pretty easy and manageable. Out of the 6 projects, only one of them was super time consuming and difficult. The rest were not bad if you started early enough and although his specs are unclear and confusing, if you go to office hours the TAs and LAs help a lot. His lectures are not mandatory and are recorded so if you have a short attention span just skip and watch his lectures later on a faster speed! I think he was easy on us because he knew none of us were full cs majors like on his midterms and final we got 2 double sided cheat sheet and multiple opportunities for extra credit. He's not a great teacher and his slides are like if an asian accent was taking notes but all the examples he shows in class cover what is going to be on the test.

I would not recommend taking cs 31 with this professor; there was 6 projects throughout the quarter and for the FIRST project I accidentally messed up my zip file I submitted and the professor said we could just contact him if we messed up the zip file for credit back for it maybe with a penalty. Throughout the quarter I emailed him like 5 times, talked to him after class about it 3 times, asked in his OH a couple times, asked the TA a couple times, and they only updated my grade in week 9 when I asked the TA in person and he assured me he would get it settled. So overall the professor is not helpful at all I knew if I had a question there was no way to contact him and get him to answer me (which I tried for other questions). The projects weren't that difficult and I got almost perfect scores on all of them and had a B in the class after the first midterm but ended up with a D in the class because the final was so difficult and very concentrated on concepts talked about in week 10. I also had outside circumstances that didn't help me to do well on the final and because the project scores were capped at 30% above the mean of the exam scores that made me fail the class. So would not recommend this professor he wasn't helpful or present.

If this is your first time learning coding, you are definitely screwed. The professor won't respond to your emails and won't answer your questions on Piazza (ironically, he encourages students to use this rather than email). You’ve got to learn the whole thing by yourself, which takes a lot of time. I have some coding experience from high school (Java), but still struggled with classes in C++ , which felt kind of different from Java.

Some people might say this class is an easy A, but this doesn’t include you.

I really hated this class.
Professor's lectures are so boring and unclear. Very disorganized and basically half the class stops coming at some point. The tests were difficult, at least for me. Small mistakes lead to big grade drops. Projects were the only thing stopping me from getting a C, but I heard for many that was what led to a lower grade, because small mistakes on the projects lead to a zero. Project specs (instructions) are unclear, and mandatory things are only revealed in office hours or later announcements or discussions, which means its always a gamble to whether you do well or not.

Professor is never helpful, neglects emails.
Don't take this class with him.

I really hated this class.
Professor's lectures are so boring and unclear. Very disorganized and basically half the class stops coming at some point. The tests were difficult, at least for me. Small mistakes lead to big grade drops. Projects were the only thing stopping me from getting a C, but I heard for many that was what led to a lower grade, because small mistakes on the projects lead to a zero. Project specs (instructions) are unclear, and mandatory things are only revealed in office hours or later announcements or discussions, which means its always a gamble to whether you do well or not.

Professor is never helpful, neglects emails.
Don't take this class with him.

TLDR: Chill class if you had previous coding experience with APCSA or similar, but may take more effort if new to coding. Lots of extra credit.

This class was pretty chill I would say. Lectures are optional, he posts slides, every lecture is recorded and posted on canvas. His lectures were fine but I ended up skipping all of them after Week 3 except for midterm and final review lectures which were helpful. I also skipped most of my discussion sections but my TA was really nice, super knowledgeable about the course, each week they reviewed course material from the presentations and had a short worksheet of conceptual and technical questions to work on, with solutions posted later.

Grading:
Non-graded Online Checkpoints (5%)
Projects (40%)
Midterm (20%)
Final (35%)

The non-graded quizzes eventually stopped after three of them, one each week, I'm not too sure why but they were just some practice multiple-choice testing the content taught in lecture. 6 projects, each of them were fine, just triple-check that you submit the project in the exact format and follow the instructions exactly as told or else you will get many points taken off. Ask any questions you have on Piazza or your TA to make sure no mishaps happen. The midterm was a mix of multiple choice, fill in the blank, and coding questions taken online during lecture (so 1 hr 50 minutes long but its supposed to take around 1.5 hours). 1 page cheat sheet front+back. One important thing to note is that one of the coding questions was word for word the same question as the online practice midterm coding question. The final was a similar format to the midterm, with a time limit of two hours (cut down from the usual 3 hour length of a final), online. 2 pages cheat sheet front+back. No practice final beforehand though.

Extra credit: Doing the LA feedback surveys for the mid-quarter and end-of-quarter gave 5 extra points to be added to the midterm and final respectively, and since both midterm and final are out of 100 points, it was very nice. There was a 20 minute online extra credit quiz on pointers around week 7-8 lecture time that was 10 points, however many points you got would be added to your midterm score. You just had to be in the lecture room in-person and turn in your 1-page cheat sheet.

Overall get solid grades on the projects, make sure to understand concepts thoroughly for exams, and practice simple coding questions too (or just put code on your cheat sheet like I did). Huang can be a funny guy sometimes too so his lectures aren't very boring.