Pretty solid professor, although his lectures can get a little boring sometimes. You definitely can't go wrong with Smallberg, and if you can pay attention for the entire 2 hours you will have a clear and conceptually deep understanding of the material.

The work for the class consists of five homework assignments, four projects, two midterms, and a final (which was made optional for our class given the circumstances). The homework assignments are reasonable, and can be completed in a few hours if done diligently. The first two projects are similar in difficulty to the homework assignments and do not require much work, maybe in the ballpark of a couple hours a day for a few days and you should be good. The last two are significantly longer and more difficult, but not impossible to complete on time; moreover, you will definitely strengthen your programming skills upon successfully doing them. The midterms were pretty easy in my opinion, and were doable with minimal studying if you paid attention and knew the material. It's not entirely clear what method he uses to assign letter grades, but 90+% raw = A is as good a guess as I have been able to make.

Overall, good professor and a fine class, even though projects 3 and 4 were a pain in the ass.

granted this was during spring 2020 so corona made things tough but smallberg is the worst professor i've ever had. by the final, he hadn't graded either of the midterms or any assignment since week 3. he also never gave us a syllabus or true grading scheme until two hours before the pass/no pass decision deadline. he barely gave us an "estimate" ish of our grade an hour before we had to make those decisions for pass/no pass and was very snarky throughout the quarter in his responses to students. he also changed the entire format of midterms a few hours before the actual midterms themselves. i found it more useful to skip his lectures and use nachenbergs slides instead. nachenbergs slides will get you 10x farther than smallbergs lectures will. i spent 90% of my time all quarter doing work for this class and had to neglect my other classes. projects take an insane amount of time. project 3 is just pure insanity. terrible class. i did learn a lot of fundamentals (from nachenberg not smallberg of course) but this class was a nightmare

My only word for him is a bad word

this class has good material, and smallberg is an efficient professor
but i felt the grading and workload of this class was highly unnecessary. projects are heavily long and inconsiderate of time of students, and while i see how it lets practice with some concepts, it gets really repetitive (do i really need 5 classes for same style of objects)
i think the tests were nice and a much better measure of how well somebody understood the concept, especially with how some people "collaborate" too much, but tests are a level playing field. this class should grade more based on tests and reduce project workload.

This class is definitely challenging, but overall wasn't too bad. It is really important to stay ahead of your work, as Smallberg does not accept late projects. The TAs are very helpful and office hours can ease your mind before submitting a project.

This class took up my whole quarter. The last half of the quarter the projects get crazy time consuming. It seemed like we were always doing a project or studying for an exam, there wasnt a time where I wasnt doing CS32. Smallberg definitely knows a lot about CS, but his lectures are filled with trivia about non-CS topics and him explaining what not to do. Whenever I went to lecture everyone was asleep or not paying attention and online shopping. We got behind in lecture, meaning for nearly all of the projects and homework assignments we were using topics that hadn't been talked about in class. Fortunately, Professor Nachenberg has slides that are extremely helpful, which is what my friends and I used to learn the material. There are LA workshops once a week usually which can be helpful depending on the LAs teaching. TA discussion section is also helpful (my TA taught us a lot clearer than the professor), but that depends on your TA. Be prepared to do a lot of self-study to get the concepts and have very little time to study for exams ( you usually have a project due the day before an exam). However, this is an extremely important class for CS so be sure to take it during a quarter where you can put all of your time into it!

I love microberg. The class is way easier in the Spring, and super manageable. Project 3 is really boring and time consuming, with no really tricky part, just a lot of busy work. But, they grade it easily and you are not expected to finish all of it, so that's a plus.

I'm going to give Smallberg credit. The man is very helpful if you seek it.

I think a lot of people are scared to ask Smallberg for help, and I don't blame them. He's quite intimidating, both on his project specs and in person when he's berating you for asking a "silly question". But the truth is that if you are struggling on his projects, and you send him an email full of detail and include relevant screenshots, he'll get back to you within a few hours, usually with a no-nonsense answer. He may still sound pompous, but you'll get the help you need, and you won't find better help from your TAs or classmates.

Chances are, you'll have Smallberg for CS32, so read the above paragraph again and remember it, because this class is NOT easy.

If you took CS31 with Smallberg, you know how the class will operate. This time, you'll have 5 HWs and 4 projects, and the HWs will often require you to turn in code files, unlike in 31. All of these, exempting the final project, are understandable. But as you have probably heard, they will take pretty much every second of free time you have. So don't take them lightly.

The midterms and final are similar to CS31, so don't stress about them if you did well in 31.

After having my attention span absolutely fried by instagram reels, it was literally smallberg's lectures that made me realize my attention span still had hope, because I was somehow able to watch like 4 of this man's 90 minute lectures back to back to back to back because I found them really interesting and well-explained. Smallberg is so unintentionally funny and like I honestly took this class for funsies and I definitely do not regret it. Yes, there was a shit load of work and honestly I was fighting for my life once I started project 3, but I have to say it was a really fun and positive experience. I think we are all super lucky to have a professor as knowledgable as smallberg. I think the way his lectures are structured perfectly catered to how my brain works. Most of my friends would disagree about his lectures being good, but I thought they were exceptionally great. One thing though, which is kind of just inherently part of cs, is that it is really easy to go from a 100 to a 50 on exams, because frankly they are super tricky. However, DO NOT BE DISCOURAGED. I got a 50 on the first midterm and still finished with an A. Would highly recommend this class for someone looking to learn data structures and algorithms, but not if you aren't willing to make the commitment. You must put in the time to practice. I started my projects the day they dropped so I didn't really have time pressure, but this class is no joke, tons and tons of work, but very rewarding at the end. I <3 smallberg

This class builds character. CS32 with Smallberg is probably the hardest and most time I've ever spent on a class. If you are considering comp sci, take this class and you will definitely know if you want to or not. And please DO NOT start the projects the day before.