He fucked us in Spring 2022. Can't trust his historical curve. We were the unluckiest group of CS takers ever. He's irresponsible and I would request yall to take eggert if you prefer learning because both the professors will now fuck your grade. We likes taking suggestions but never acts on them. His midterm and final approach of assessment sucks as there is barely any scope of getting a partial credit in any problem. CAREFUL NEXT BATCHES!!!

My favorite CS class so far, this class is a really fantastic introduction to computer architecture that struck me as far more interesting than the coding work in CS 31 and CS 32.

The workload is generally pretty light – there are a total of five homework assignments, each of which will take 30 minutes max, and four labs, which will be pretty time-consuming. You do get a lot of time for the labs, which is why I say overall the workload isn't all that great. There is going to be more lecture time, with watching the lecture recordings and then watching the lecture itself, but it really does help you learn – the pre-lecture is kind of like when you read the textbook chapter before going to lecture, except more engaging.

Out of the four labs, the first one (Data Lab) is by far the worst one, since you get basically no guidance for it and was really time-consuming for me. The other three – Bomb Lab, Attack Lab, and Parallel Lab – are all pretty fun applications of the material we learn in the class, with good opportunities for extra credit. In our quarter, you could earn 10 points of extra credit for the Bomb Lab and up to 15 for the Parallel Lab, depending on your speed up, which was quite generous. Don't procrastinate too much on them, since they do take some time and care, but for me, they were relatively enjoyable.

Reinman is a good instructor virtually, and the TAs are valuable resources. Because of the circumstances surrounding the Spring 2020 quarter, the final was made optional so I can't speak on that, but the midterm exam was quite fair and shouldn't be too tough as long as you've done the hoemwork and labs and are careful during the exam. There wasn't a lot of partial credit to be earned on the midterm, which was quite annoying considering that we only had five questions on it during the virtual quarter, but I think he took the feedback to heart and changed it for the final.

Spring 2024 was the last quarter Dr. Reinman taught the class, which sucks for you guys because he is a star lecturer. He told us in class that he'll be teaching an upper-div ethics course starting next year, which I'll be eager to take.

The course covers the basics to, essentially, how computers actually work. Think registers, architectures, linking; that sort of thing. The ten weeks were cut into two parts:

The first three weeks were much lower-level; you'll be literally working with 1s and 0s and figuring out how computers actually store information in memory. Dr. Reinman said straight up that this part of the course is much harder. Our midterm in week 5 only tested us on those first three weeks so that we'd have enough time to study for them. You'll need a decent understanding in binary math, along with a good enough work ethic to get around to grasping how memory is organized. Don't get me wrong-- the lectures were never rushed, and Dr. Reinman was painfully patient in answering any and all questions, but the material in the first few weeks is simply completely different than anything you've needed to learn before. You're learning the inner workings of a modern computer, whose system organization has been refined and tweaked over a century of computer research. You're going to have to work hard to grasp that.

The following seven weeks were much higher-level, briefly going over each of the "top hits" of different computer abstractions. You talk about the virtual memory, optimization, linking, caching, and threading, among other things. The material's much more cerebral, and goes a much faster pace. I did better not taking notes in class and just listening closely to him lecturing. For most of these topics you'll do just fine as long as you really "get" the idea and the motivations for why they're implemented.

The homework was effort-based but I really suggest you try them before looking up the answers. The projects are modified from a CMU course and are very well-written. Many of them are, essentially, games-- you're given a goal and points for each checkpoint and it's your job to figure out to get there by interpreting the assembly code you're given. Give yourself lots of time for each project, and FOLLOW THE SPEC TO A T. I averaged around 10 hours for each project, which was a faster time than many other people.

I wish all the best for Dr. Reinman, and I hope the next teacher(s) go through the material in a similar way. It's a very specialized course, so if you're not 100% invested in the material you will get bored and not do well. However, if you genuinely have a love for computers and what they're capable of doing, take this course as soon as you can.

At the beginning of the class, I was slightly intimidated by the class content as it is very dense, but I feel that as you practice the class concepts become a lot more clear. The professor's lectures can be convoluted and are a bit dull but I highly recommend attending the lecture as that is the best way to get the content. The four labs are not a problem at all as lots of time is given. That being said, I highly recommend starting all the labs early. Overall, this class is not too bad but I highly recommend practicing reading X86 or stack attacking (the two most confusing topics) to solidify understanding.

really nice guy but i must say he is not a very good lecturer. he is pretty helpful in office hours but theres always the same 10 people asking about a million questions which no hate but guys i just have one question about the lab pls let me ask my question before you ask about the 37th edge case that won't be tested anywhere or at least not in a lower div cs class. GO TO LECTURE don't be like me and sleep through it bc then you have to watch 20 hours of the most information dense lectures the week before the final. be sure to do a lot of practice problems from lab-style problems bc those are SO useful and also the LA worksheets too omg if you manage to get Alec as your LA (if he LAs again for cs 33) he is the most goated person in the entire cs department like actually in the cs hall of fame.

The class itself, adapted from CMU, is very hard. But Dr. Reinman is very kind and helpful. I forget to detach the answer sheet and get no final score at first, but luckily Dr. Reinman helped me scan my final.
I really learned a lot from this class and feel interested on these topics. Always a good choice taking class with Reinman. (Note: He said on lecture that he will not teach CS 33 starting Spring 2025.)

If you can take CS 33 with Reinman, take it with him.

I think the class was reasonable and manageable. The workload was very fair. The exams were very fair. A little more than half of the students ended up with some sort of A. The class is heavily frontloaded in my opinion, so it is okay if you feel confused for the first few weeks.

From what I remember, weeks 5-10 felt more conceptual and weren't as heavily tested. When they were tested on the final, they were weighted less than attack/bomb lab-style questions. He made a mistake on one of the questions on the final, but I think the question was graded leniently. However, I can understand how people felt that the error on the question caused a time-sink and didn't allow them to make as much progress on other questions.

He isn't a super clear lecturer. One of the LAs for this class, Eric Lu, made videos that walked through each discussion worksheet. The discussion worksheets for this class aren't that long but they are super helpful. I watched every single one of these videos and it was extremely useful. To be honest, this is the way that I learned the class material after about week 6. I stopped taking as many notes and paying as close attention to Reinman's lectures because of how much better Eric Lu's explanations were of the class concepts. This was a great way to get interactive practice, which you don't really get much of in lectures. Reinman had around 5 supplemental videos for some of his lectures about more interactive topics/concepts. These were also helpful.

I wouldn't say he's the teacher that Smallberg/Carey is, but I must acknowledge that being the same level of teacher as them is an inherently difficult task since most people enjoy concepts from CS 31/32 more than those taught in this class. I found computer organization to have some topics that felt boring at times, but Reinman still made the class feel reasonable and not a pain for students. He got into enough detail for this introductory class.

Taking this class with Eggert CS 35L also helped me understand topics related to CS 33 that were covered in the latter parts of 35L. The difficulty of this class compared to 35L, however, is night and day in my opinion. Enjoy this class while you can.

CS 33 is much different than 31 and 32, you'll do very little actual coding rather than the Data and Parallel Lab which in total requires 40-50 lines of code. The class is much more conceptually reliant than the previous two. You're going to get really good at tracing x86-64 through Bomb and Attack Lab, which actually ended up being kind of fun once you learn the nature of how they work. In my experience every lab started out incredibly daunting but as you chip away at it you learn the relevant concepts and get prepared for the exams. Some topics are incredibly difficult to grasp but exams are open note making these topics slightly more manageable. All lectures are recorded which is almost necessary if you're trying to take notes during lecture as Reinman moves fast between highly conceptual topics, that aside he is a kind man and gets very excited when students are engaged as he too understands the concepts of the class aren't always the most comprehendible but as he says these difficult concepts ensure job security.

Incredible informative and dense class. Blink and you might miss a crucial piece of knowledge, so paying attention to lectures is of the utmost important. The class is comprised of very light homework, 4 quite difficult labs, 1 midterm, and 1 final. The labs were all very useful in understanding the concepts but they could be incredibly frustrating and starting early is essential. The midterm is quite manageable but the final was significantly more difficult as it is comprehensive. Professor Reinman himself is a wonderful teacher and very enthusiastic. He spends a long time answering every single question, so make sure to listen to the Q and A.

He has definitely read these reviews because the class has gotten better from what people have wrote in the past! Still would't say he is the best lecturer but it gets the job done. I just wonder why we just use the entirety of CMU's curriculum