Professor
Glenn Reinman
Most Helpful Review
Spring 2022 - Glenn Reinman. I was initially debating doing 33 this quarter, but everybody and their mother told me to take the course with Reinman. I scoured through Bruinwalk reviews, and I was super sure about my decision...well, till I wasn't. My experience with this class (and most peers in Spring 2022) was extremely different from past years, at least going off Bruinwalk: Class: Reinman follows flipped lecture, where he gives about ~2 hours of prerecorded content a week and follows up on the content/takes Q&A during the allotted lecture time. These pre-lecture videos are practically just slides with an audio tape, and they're incredibly content-heavy. 5 minutes feel like 20, and I personally really disliked - for the most part, there was no explanation and it was just him reading off the slides. If I had an hour to live, I'd spend them watching these because they felt like eternities in the passing. The slides aren't like Carey's, either, which you could self-study from. In class, however, he does a fairly good deal going over the questions that students asked, and I think he mostly answered all questions directed at him. I'm personally not a fan of 2 hour lectures, but that's certainly not on Reinman. The class is, in my opinion, a terrible adaption of CMU's CS 213, and shortened to fit in the quarter system. But it really shouldn't. 1. Primary Labs (Data, Bomb, Attack, Parallel): 32% (8% each) + Warmup Lab (3%) = 35% The labs were most likely my favorite bit of the class. The first three labs are standard CS:APP content, whereas the parallel lab is unique to CS 33. I'd wager the data lab was the hardest by far, but the bomb and attack labs were the most fun. The parallel lab was mostly a joke (I think the TA made it simpler?) and most people I know got it done with in 2 hours, tops. 2. Homework: 5% and Discussion Sections: 10% Both based on completion. The homework material was fairly represented on the tests, so I'd recommend doing them yourself. The discussion sections being mandatory high-key sucked, but the LA worksheets we covered were probably the most clutch thing to happen to this course. They go over practically all the kinds of problems, and our batch created a master doc with solutions, which really helped understand a bunch of concepts. 11/10 for the LAs. Try enrolling in Salekh's section if possible, he's probably the best teacher this course can have. 3. Midterm: 20% I have no idea what on god's green earth happened here. Reinman seems overly obsessed with academic integrity, so he made six different versions of the exam, and gave everyone only 40 minutes to attempt them. It was awful, it was abysmal, and the class average was 49 ("lowest in his 20+ years @ UCLA") Regrades haven't been considered and we've already taken the final. He's mentioned that he'll lower the weight of the midterm based on final performance and he'll be curving, but we'll have to wait and see how that pans out. 4. Final: 30% Reinman probably realized he screwed up during the midterm, so the final was a much better level, props to him for that. I'd say the expected class average is going to be around 65 - which doesn't sound excellent - but after that midterm, I'm going to take this with my arms wide open and all my heart. Reinman just seemed strangely convinced that people were cheating throughout the course. If you did poorly, he'd explain how we should know everything (this problem was on the hw, this problem was done in class, etc.), but if you did well - like the class did on the bomb lab- he found it sus that everyone got near-full scores on the lab. I found this extremely silly, because he compared a 40 minute clusterfuck of an examination to a good lab where we could consult TAs, and spend two weeks working on it. In terms of workload, I'd wager the class peaks in workload around the bomb lab/midterm, and strongly plateaus post that. Weeks 7 through 10 are super easy in terms of content, labs, homeworks, and you can easily cruise and focus on other classes during that time. The man nearly bombed my GPA, attacked my integrity, but with all the data I have: I'll probably end up with an A-. I can't think of any parallel puns atm, but idk. I surely didn't enjoy CS 33 with Reinman. Edit: Insanely nonsensical grading scheme too. Only gave out 35% A+/A/A-s this quarter, so don't raise your hopes off past grading distributions.
Spring 2022 - Glenn Reinman. I was initially debating doing 33 this quarter, but everybody and their mother told me to take the course with Reinman. I scoured through Bruinwalk reviews, and I was super sure about my decision...well, till I wasn't. My experience with this class (and most peers in Spring 2022) was extremely different from past years, at least going off Bruinwalk: Class: Reinman follows flipped lecture, where he gives about ~2 hours of prerecorded content a week and follows up on the content/takes Q&A during the allotted lecture time. These pre-lecture videos are practically just slides with an audio tape, and they're incredibly content-heavy. 5 minutes feel like 20, and I personally really disliked - for the most part, there was no explanation and it was just him reading off the slides. If I had an hour to live, I'd spend them watching these because they felt like eternities in the passing. The slides aren't like Carey's, either, which you could self-study from. In class, however, he does a fairly good deal going over the questions that students asked, and I think he mostly answered all questions directed at him. I'm personally not a fan of 2 hour lectures, but that's certainly not on Reinman. The class is, in my opinion, a terrible adaption of CMU's CS 213, and shortened to fit in the quarter system. But it really shouldn't. 1. Primary Labs (Data, Bomb, Attack, Parallel): 32% (8% each) + Warmup Lab (3%) = 35% The labs were most likely my favorite bit of the class. The first three labs are standard CS:APP content, whereas the parallel lab is unique to CS 33. I'd wager the data lab was the hardest by far, but the bomb and attack labs were the most fun. The parallel lab was mostly a joke (I think the TA made it simpler?) and most people I know got it done with in 2 hours, tops. 2. Homework: 5% and Discussion Sections: 10% Both based on completion. The homework material was fairly represented on the tests, so I'd recommend doing them yourself. The discussion sections being mandatory high-key sucked, but the LA worksheets we covered were probably the most clutch thing to happen to this course. They go over practically all the kinds of problems, and our batch created a master doc with solutions, which really helped understand a bunch of concepts. 11/10 for the LAs. Try enrolling in Salekh's section if possible, he's probably the best teacher this course can have. 3. Midterm: 20% I have no idea what on god's green earth happened here. Reinman seems overly obsessed with academic integrity, so he made six different versions of the exam, and gave everyone only 40 minutes to attempt them. It was awful, it was abysmal, and the class average was 49 ("lowest in his 20+ years @ UCLA") Regrades haven't been considered and we've already taken the final. He's mentioned that he'll lower the weight of the midterm based on final performance and he'll be curving, but we'll have to wait and see how that pans out. 4. Final: 30% Reinman probably realized he screwed up during the midterm, so the final was a much better level, props to him for that. I'd say the expected class average is going to be around 65 - which doesn't sound excellent - but after that midterm, I'm going to take this with my arms wide open and all my heart. Reinman just seemed strangely convinced that people were cheating throughout the course. If you did poorly, he'd explain how we should know everything (this problem was on the hw, this problem was done in class, etc.), but if you did well - like the class did on the bomb lab- he found it sus that everyone got near-full scores on the lab. I found this extremely silly, because he compared a 40 minute clusterfuck of an examination to a good lab where we could consult TAs, and spend two weeks working on it. In terms of workload, I'd wager the class peaks in workload around the bomb lab/midterm, and strongly plateaus post that. Weeks 7 through 10 are super easy in terms of content, labs, homeworks, and you can easily cruise and focus on other classes during that time. The man nearly bombed my GPA, attacked my integrity, but with all the data I have: I'll probably end up with an A-. I can't think of any parallel puns atm, but idk. I surely didn't enjoy CS 33 with Reinman. Edit: Insanely nonsensical grading scheme too. Only gave out 35% A+/A/A-s this quarter, so don't raise your hopes off past grading distributions.
AD
Most Helpful Review
Professor Reinman is a very smart, funny guy who makes students feel comfortable in his class. He welcomes discussion, and does not mind questions. However, his lectures aren't very organized and he goes over material very, very quickly. In addition, his lectures on parallel programming concepts are very advanced, and many times I was very lost. His lectures felt like it was directed more towards graduate students or students who are extremely knowledgeable in computers in general. What's worse was that there were no digital lecture notes or even a book to fall back on. However, this class is relatively easier workload-wise than other CS classes. First, he doesn't administer quizzes, midterms, or a final. He only assigned three labs throughout the entire quarter which each took less than 5 hours each. There is a big project in the end where you'd have to parallelize an already existing software, which takes a LOT of time. I recommend this Reinman for CS 133 if you're interested in parallel programming and already have some knowledge of the technology behind it. Also, this class isn't time consuming except for the final project. But for me personally, I didn't get much out of this class.
Professor Reinman is a very smart, funny guy who makes students feel comfortable in his class. He welcomes discussion, and does not mind questions. However, his lectures aren't very organized and he goes over material very, very quickly. In addition, his lectures on parallel programming concepts are very advanced, and many times I was very lost. His lectures felt like it was directed more towards graduate students or students who are extremely knowledgeable in computers in general. What's worse was that there were no digital lecture notes or even a book to fall back on. However, this class is relatively easier workload-wise than other CS classes. First, he doesn't administer quizzes, midterms, or a final. He only assigned three labs throughout the entire quarter which each took less than 5 hours each. There is a big project in the end where you'd have to parallelize an already existing software, which takes a LOT of time. I recommend this Reinman for CS 133 if you're interested in parallel programming and already have some knowledge of the technology behind it. Also, this class isn't time consuming except for the final project. But for me personally, I didn't get much out of this class.