He was a good professor who went in depth with every single topic. As long as you start the projects early and get help from office hours and make good cheat sheets for tests, the class should be easy to get a good grade in. I didn't do any of these and so I did pretty bad.

PLEASE DO NOT TAKE THIS CLASS IF YOU ARE NOT CS MAJOR AND YOU DID NOT TAKE CS 31 IN UCLA, EXAMS ARE ONLY MEANT TO CS MAJORS , EXAMS ARE SUPPER HARD , ONLY 1HR FOR MID TERM EXAM, 2 AND HALF HOURS FOR FINAL EXAM, PROJECTS ARE JUST TIME CONSUMING, THIS CLASS HAS TO BE LABELED AS "ONLY FOR CS MAJORS", IF YOU ARE CS MAJOR PARADISE IF YOU ARE NOT HELL!!!

The hardest class I have ever taken at UCLA. I don't have too much more to add that other students haven't said already, I just want to stress the epic curve that I received. I failed every single midterm as well as the final, I did okay on the projects, got an average of 70 across all of them, and probably an average of 90 on the homeworks and I still passed. Thank daddy Block for that because I wasn't about to take this class again. I really like Smallberg, it's just that this class requires A LOT of time (for me anyway).
Go Bruins! You can do it, I considered dropping this class several times but I'm glad I stuck through it.

These projects are not plug and chug. You need to spend time working through everything, and I cannot stress enough how important it is to start early and go to office hours. Smallberg is super smart and helpful enough, but his lectures are not that interesting and it was often hard to complete the projects with the attention to detail that is necessary to not lose significant points on test cases when they are grading.
Advice for projects: test the weird cases (e.x. negative or invalid inputs, etc.)

The first couple weeks are a little bit of a snooze since he reviews a lot of the concepts from CS 31. After it kicks into a lot of useful information that I wish I still remembered. This is an important class and it will be worth it to pay attention and learn the materials. The midterms are long and annoying but they aren't too bad in my opinion. The real killer is the final. It's really difficult and really long but don't worry because everybody does not great on it. The first two projects aren't bad but project 3 is the big one. Start early because it will take a lot of time. Our project 4 was super easy but I've known him to give longer ones during other quarters so be ready for a difficult projects 3 and 4.

Smallberg's pretty good at getting into the nitty-gritty of C++. Projects 3 and 4 are very time-consuming. Exams are hard. Homeworks are easy enough, as are the first couple of projects. Attend lectures and take notes, start early on the projects and study for the exams. I didn't do the last one well enough cause they're open book and open notes, but it cost me.

I am so lucky to have taken my both introductory cs classes with this professor, a professor who genuinely cares about his students. I enjoyed his lectures and learned a lot.

Great professor! Go to his and his TA's and LA's office hours. Also, massive props to LA Jahan!

Smallberg's lecture style of typing out code on the projector is actually very helpful and the notes I took in lecture were able to guide me through my projects, while also giving me some sample code to work off of. The time he takes during the 10 minute breaks and before/after class to answer student questions is invaluable and goes to show how much work he puts in to help his students out. Extremely knowledgeable about C++, and has an good sense of humor about it too! Lecture was good for larger concepts that could then be refined with practice problems in discussion. My number one tip is GO TO DISCUSSION. You can go so much more in depth on problems in a way that's more similar to the exams. Other than that, always plan to spend 15+ hours set aside for some of the larger products. They can be hard to finish by the deadlines sometimes.

If you can actually pay attention during Smallberg's 2 hours lecture, understanding the material for this class will be a breeze, assuming you did decent in cs 31. Highly recommend sitting front row. For projects, start early. Go to office hours a lot.
This class definitely has a heavy workload, especially in the final three weeks, but if you are interested in computer science, I highly recommend it.