- Plenty has been said about the caliber and teaching style of Smallberg (or as I call him by his rapper name, Lil' Berg). He is extremely helpful for his students, extraordinarily thorough, and very clear in the project specs and syllabus as for his expectations of your work.
- All of the previous comments about Lil' Berg's projects (their lengths and difficulty) are true! Project 3 is especially long, so make sure to start early. It took me ~30 hours to complete to a decent level, though it certainly wasn't perfect!
- Smallberg is very flexible as to circumstances regarding missing exams. I wasn't able to make the second midterm because of a 5-day geology trip for another class, so I emailed Smallberg and I was completely excused from taking the exam. I didn't take it at all (no make-up), and simply had my first midterm and the final worth more to cover the percentage of the second midterm.
- You didn't hear it from me, but ChatGPT is very good at doing the homeworks. It's not so good at doing the projects, as there are a lot more moving parts and higher-level organization that you need to implement yourself. Menial components or algorithm-based functions are ChatGPT's specialty. Make sure you actually know how the functions work and how to use them, since you won't have ChatGPT on the exams!
- This class is a lot of work, but interesting. You'll learn a ton and become a much better programmer. Good luck!! (make sure that the monkey doesn't escape and that you don't spill coffee on your shirt)

Yes, Projects 3 and 4 will keep you up late for many nights. But I have to say I enjoyed doing them and it was very rewarding seeing the final product.

DO NOT FALL BEHIND! Besides that, you'll have a lot of fun. I miss Smallberg and Nachenberg.

Overall manageable class. Start projects early, especially Project 3 and Project 4, and you will find them fun instead of stressful. Reach out to peers or TAs if you need help

Professor Smallberg is a great professor. His lectures can be a bit bland at times, but he always tries to guide you through the reasons behind learning the concepts in class. CS32 is an extremely time consuming class. Projects take about 5 - 10 hours on average, with project 3 being the longest at 20 hours. Homeworks are slightly easier. Exams are not too hard if you study hard enough. The midterm 1 median was 32/35, the midterm 2 median was 55/65, and the final median was 85/100. If you take this course, you will learn a lot about computer science.

Dr. Smallberg is a great professor but his online lectures (recorded) are long and dull (with the exception of his monkey and his clumsiness). If you intend to get through the lecture without falling asleep watch the video at 2x speed. Also refer to Nachenberg's slides where appropriate; they help a lot!

In this class, Smallberg builds very good intuition, as he will go on and on for a long time for why a certain algorithm/practice is incorrect, before finally showing the correct one. While I hated this method of teaching while I took the class, looking back, it helped me out a lot. Smallberg is also a walking C++ dictionary, as he was good at answering any question about C++ syntax.

There are 4 Projects and 5 Homeworks in this class. The homeworks were as hard as CS31 projects, while projects were longer (except for Project 1 and Project 4). Project 3 is the most brutal one, as he gives you two weeks to work on it. We had the Battleship project. I procrastinated the first week (bad idea), which forced me to work A LOT in the second week. Out of the last 48 hours before it was due, I spent 14 hours working on the project. Recommendation: do not procrastinate on projects.

For this class, use Smallberg's lectures to learn, and then Nachenberg's slides to review. It will help in the long run! Overall, in hindsight, I found this class to be more fun than CS31 and CS33; discussing edge cases and creating test cases with others was the most fun part of the projects.

SMALLBERG is KING

CS32 as a whole is an entire different ballpark than CS31. I took CS31 in the Winter with a different professor and entering this class was very different and. much more difficult. First of all, his lectures are entirely asynchronous and he posts them on the days class is scheduled for, and also on those days he holds a Q&A session where you can ask him anything about the material/homework/project during the assigned lecture time. His lectures work as asynchronous because this way we won't fall behind on lectures, because I know for students who took this class before Covid, they were always like two lectures behind. I guess that is a plus, but personally, I learn better with in-class lectures. As a word of advice, I would recommend watching these lectures literally on 2x speed and if you are still a little lost, go to discussion. I found that I didn't learn as well from the lectures but the discussions helped a lot, which I think is because I had a TA who explained these difficult concepts in a very manageable way. Your TA does matter in this class, and if you decide the TA you have isn't presenting the material in a way you can learn, go to a different TA's discussion. I would also highly recommend going to the TA office hours. Even if I didn't really have questions, having an environment to work in where everyone was doing the same project made me more motivated to do the projects. Also, and this is very important, DO NOT WAIT TO DO THE PROJECTS. Our projects were usually due on Tuesdays and the next one releases THE SAME TUESDAY. I often was overwhelmed by the workload and didn't start the next project until the weekend since I worked so hard last minute to complete the previous project, and then I would find myself in a difficult cycle of being behind on the project. So GO TO OFFICE HOURS the week the project is assigned and AT LEAST get started on the project the week before it is due; your whole life will be much easier if you work on the project the week in advance. I got a surprisingly good grade in this class and I would say it was because I got really good grades on all of the projects and homework assignments and did about average on the exams. The first exam was in person and even though I got average on the exam (70%) I still felt way more prepared on this exam than the second exam, which was online. The second exam was simply 3 coding questions and introduced a topic none of us were familiar with yet (trees), but somehow was supposed to get since we knew recursion. The final was very different, since it was online and had no coding questions and instead tested on some sorting, but mostly entirely Big-O. Even though it was "multiple choice", every question had about 20-30 options, so you really had to know your stuff. Regardless, very difficult class, but work really hard on the projects and homework to get good grades on them, and do about average to maybe above average on the exams and I think you'll be good.

Extra:
-I felt like understanding linked lists was the big turning point for me in this class, because understanding how they worked built on many of the other data structures in this class. Also, recursion is going to be difficult, but do your best to understand it through all of the assigned practice, and LA worksheets because unfortunately, they also test pretty heavily on your knowledge of recursion.
-Project 3 is always making some sort of game and it mainly tests on recursion, inheritance, choice of data structures, along with just your ability to come up with solutions. You get two weeks on this project, but it takes lowkey forever, so definitely start it the first week it's assigned because you WILL have questions, and you will run into a lot of errors.

The jump between CS31 and CS32 is pretty big. I went into CS32 knowing it was a weeder class and I almost got weeded out. The first two projects are pretty manageable, but project 3 will literally ruin you so please start the day it is assigned. I spent nearly ten hours for like three days straight trying to get a FEW function completed. Do not slack in this class. My only real issue with the course is that the lectures can be quite boring and that the tests (at least the second midterm and final) were not easy to prepare for and only covered a few topics. It was hard because the final, for example, was almost entirely big-O, which only was covered in like a lecture and a half. Other than that, Smallberg is a nice guy and the class is just hard. Make sure to just start early and ask for help when you need it because the TAs and Smallberg will usually accommodate.

took this class as someone with no cs background other than cs31. smallberg was really nice overall and he just posted recorded lectures every week and had q&a sessions during the live lecture times. the projects were manageable but if you aren't already good at coding you should expect to dedicate a good chunk of time to it. it also just feels like so much work because there was a homework/project due almost every week (sometimes both in the same week).
exams were pretty rough for me, both on paper (midterm 1) and online(the other 2 exams).
overall smallberg is cool and i can honestly say his lectures aren't unbearable (as someone who hates lectures). i appreciate him cutting out literally every second of the lecture that wasn't necessary and his monkey that pops up every now and then. take this class!!