Smallberg seems to have plenty of reviews already that give a pretty good gist of him and the class. Here are some things I'll emphasize:

1) He does an excellent job of teaching the material, showcasing every detail, and making sure the class can follow along with him.
2) His lectures can get very dry, especially since they are almost two hours long.
3) He does not use slides. He just writes out different programs that illustrate what he wants to teach the class. This worked for me as it showed me the actual application of each lesson, but it requires you to take good notes.
4) Midterm 1 and 2 were combined this quarter and it was fairly easy with around a 90 average.
5) Final was more difficult than the midterm but still manageable. Average was around an 80.
6) Projects aren't too bad but there are a lot of them (7 in total) so just make sure to manage your time properly.

Dear professor Smallberg, I can certainly see why you received so many compliments in previous years. You are a great lecturer, making everything super clear. Your assignments were fine, some of them are very interesting.

However, you are irresponsible. On week 10, we only get 4 out of 9 assignment grades, and the midterm grade was missing as well. Then, based on the first 4 assignment grades, you tell me my "estimated grade is B+". That's 2 HOURS before the deadline for changing grade type. So I changed this course to P/NP. Then you released the rest grades, I got 100 on all of them. At the very end of the quarter, I still do not know my midterm grade nor my final exam grade. You promised you would post the grade, but you didn't.

I won't complain at all if I screwed it up myself. But your irresponsibility leaves my grade with a question mark. I received a P, but I had been wondering if it wouldbe A- or an A if I did not change the grade type. Incomplete information about grades is just RIDICULOUS.

If your correctness score is 60 or below, it may not be because of a lack of
understanding of C++, but something more fundamental: You ignored
repeated admonitions in the spec and in class to avoid specific foolish
mistakes, yet you made them anyway. Whatever your field of study is, you
must fix this characteristic about yourself. No employer would dare hire
someone who ignores repeated spoken and written directives: You'd pose a
risk to the safety of yourself and others if you ignore safety rules, a
risk to the financial health of the company if you ignore legal regulations,
and a drain on productivity if your ignoring specifications causes you or
others to devote more time later on to correct your mistakes.

What's exasperating is that despite all that was said above, there will be
people who will ask for a re-examination of their correctness score
without saying which test case numbers to look at or without having tried
those cases under multiple compilers or without running the Project 2
tester mentioned in FAQ #7. Those people are exhibiting the exact
characteristic that may have caused them to make the mistake that cost
them so many points: They don't pay attention to what they read.

Smallberg is an absolute legend. He probably knows more about C++ than Bjarne Stroustrup and Dennis Ritchie (whom he mentions a lot). This is class is one my all-time favorites! It's also quite easy if you're willing to put in the effort with a good attitude. If you took AP CS in high school, you're chilling.

I must say, Smallberg is NOT the hype that he is made out to be. While he is obviously a brilliant professor, extremely knowledgeable about the subject matter, and has his engaging moments, there are a few notable caveats in his teaching style I want to draw attention to. (Note: if you're a first-year CS or EE major, you basically have no choice but to take him, as he is the only professor for CS 31 in fall).

Smallberg uses a flipped classroom style of teaching. He does a meticulous job of prerecording an entire quarter's worth of lectures that you watch on your own time, and the listed class time is spent in Q&A sessions. While I can see how some may like this, I thoroughly hated it, as the lectures were sooooo dry. In Q&A sessions (think about them like 200-person office hours), Smallberg is actually pretty funny: at the direct expense of an unfortunate few. He is not afraid to humiliate you in front your hundreds of peers if you ask questions that he deems "beneath" him, to the point where I would feel uncomfortable asking questions (even through I was fortunate enough to never be directly called out by him). It doesn't help that the class is 80% men, so I can only imagine the impostor syndrome my female peers could potentially have felt. Additionally, grading and curving is BRUTAL. The class is a war of attrition. There are no defined cutoffs for specific grades when the class begins; your projects and tests basically go into a black box that gives you a letter grade at the end of the day, so hoping and praying is the name of the game. Everyone is so smart that even the extremely difficult final was not curved. Despite getting a solid B- on the final, I was lucky enough to scrape by a 93%.

As others said, the projects can be time consuming. Being a complete beginner, it took me several hours every day to complete the projects. Tests were hard for me and I completely tanked the first midterm, but pulled through for the second which saved me.

Smallberg is a good professor who clearly knows a lot about what he teaches. Discussion sections were not helpful for me unless I had a specific question. Textbook was beneficial to me.

Smallberg is a clear and helpful professor. He is open to questions, and is basically a walking CS dictionary. His lectures explain stuff very well.

You will learn a lot in CS 31, especially if you have no previous experience. It is rewarding, but if you have no prior experience, it will be very hard. His tests have a strange format that takes getting used to, and I got absolutely hammered on the first midterm, scoring below the 25th percentile.

I also spent more time in CS than the rest of my classes combined, which were Math 32B, Physics 1B, and Chem 30A. CS 31 is no joke if you're not a CS major.

He curves generously, but people still get hammered in terms of GPA. CS isn't an easy tech breadth, and you should think before choosing a CS tech breadth.

Finally, the book was kind-of useful.

The workload is INSANE. The weekly projects would take me all week to complete, spending every moment outside of my other classes on them. Great class if you love computer science

Prof Smallberg does flipped learning, so you watch his recorded lectures as homework (probably on 2x because they're usually 70-90 minutes long), and then come to his live lecture to ask questions if you have any (also Zoomed and recorded). So, after the first week of class, the lecture hall is probably around 15% filled. I attended a little under half of the live Q&A sessions (had conflicts the other times because of personal reasons), but I either joined on Zoom or watched the recordings for the rest of them, which I'd say wasn't really necessary for someone who didn't have questions, but I figured might as well let it play in the background while working on a project. So while Q&As can be still considered optional, definitely watch the recorded lectures and make it a habit so you don't get more than maybe a week behind on it because it will drag on and on unless for some reason you think you're super comfortable with C++ already in which case you should still just watch them anyway. There's no slides or anything, so you just have to rely on your own notes when you go back to study before an exam. Flipped learning requires accountability on your part, but I think I preferred it this way because it made my schedule more flexible for other things.

Discussion section was alright for me. We had an ungraded worksheet to work on every week to review the concepts we covered, which was useful, but didn't make that much of a difference for me.

The main things you get graded on are the projects and the tests. I found the tests incredibly straightforward and based off the lectures, so as long as you understand what's covered there, you're set for the tests content-wise. The projects are probably what takes up most of your effort in the course, and have varying levels of difficulty, but I didn't find them particularly challenging (though for context, I had many years of programming experience before this class, just not in C++), though they can take a while so definitely start early. And also, make sure to read the write-ups thoroughly because as Smallberg likes to laud, the project specs and associated FAQs usually covered my misconceptions and bugs when I was working on any projects.

I think the biggest determinant of success in this course is attention to detail. Pay attention to everything and double and triple check everything especially on exams because small mistakes can cost a lot. Same for projects, but I'd assume that would be more built in and intuitive as to how doing the assignment works.

There's an $89 online textbook that you have to purchase called a zyBook, because it's linked to online assignments that count toward your grade. It didn't do much to supplement my learning, but I wouldn't have minded reading it and doing its assignments if the book hadn't been so expensive, dammit. Least favorite part.

Smallberg himself is hilarious. He really emphasizes the attention-to-detail part and will be pretty snarky when people ask him stuff he's already answered in the project spec or other write-up on the CS 31 website, but I find it funny and also fair. With that being said, don't be afraid to ask him stuff, whether about the content or about stuff that's affecting how you're doing in the course, because while you think you can mentally parrot off his response about being responsible and doing things on time or whatnot, it never hurts to ask, and he's a pretty reasonable professor. The CS 31 classes are mostly unified regardless of your professor, but overall, I enjoyed taking this class with Smallberg.

Smallberg yyds