I will separate my review into several parts: Lecture, Labs/Discussion, and Exams.
Lecture: Hairy Shoe's lecture is basically just him reading off of the slides he prepared. I don't think most people knows what he is doing during lecture. When people ask him questions, he usually answers in a way that doesn't answer the question. So imagine asking him, "Do you like apples?" He would answer something like, "Apples are red, RiGhT?" Hairy talks in an aggressive tone whenever he is talking about something he assumes we should all know (maybe it is because the amount of "RiGhT?!"s he uses in lecture). I will give him credit that the things he mentioned in the reviews are very likely to be on the exams. But beware, even if he tells you what he'll put on the test, the test is still hard lol.

Labs/Discussion: Sicheng is literally godsend. I cannot survive this class without Sicheng's slides and discussion. His slides are amazing (sometimes giving you the answers directly) and he is x1000 clearer at explaining things than Hairy Shoe. He only needs 2 minutes to explain something clearly whereas Hairy takes the whole lecture and no one understands. Anyways, the labs are easy. Which is the only good thing about this class. I honestly don't think Hairy even knows what we are doing for the labs cuz we aren't tested on them.

Exams: Slightly better than Eggert but still hard. For the midterm, he tested us on several scheduling algorithms and replacement policies. We had to write down each step for each scheduling algorithm/replacement policies (CFS, clock, LRU...), so be sure to know how to do that. Also know how to do page translations... Hairy seems to be pretty lazy about the practice problems before the exams. He uses practice problems from UT and Jon's past midterm exams. He doesn't even filter the questions because there are several questions that are out of scope. I really question if he even checked the questions before posting it... My suggestion is to know all the stuff on his review slides and copy the examples he mentioned in lecture because he might just copy-paste them to the exam (if he allows cheat sheets).

Overall, I didn't enjoy this class but I still think I learned something important. Also Hairy doesn't curve so be sure to do well for the labs :)))

This class was a lot of work. There are four labs plus an intro lab that all require quite a lot of time, and there's not a lot of overlap between the labs and class material. The TAs were mainly responsible for explaining and helping with the labs. Professor Xu is an ok lecturer, but he was very accommodating and tried his best to make the class more manageable for students. The midterm and final were difficult, but the professor did provide practice problems for the final, which helped.

Honestly CS 111 is never a very easy class, but taking it with Prof. Xu makes it a little better, since the exams are not that hard. But one thing worth notice is that Harry reused his old midterms (which are actually available in the test bank), making the exams in some degree unfair and many students having crazy high scores in the midterm. Projects are A LOT OF WORK- basically no weekend. Just pray you get a helpful TA... And for the pace of the class, yes, that's a big problem. Harry fall behind his schedule 2 weeks or so, so when the quarter approaches the end, ummm..., things went fast.

I actually really liked this class, certainly better than any Eggert-taught class I've taken (though I think that's more of a personal preference). Sure, the projects were a lot of work, but that's what you expect from CS 111. I really appreciated how the lectures were generally pretty easy to follow and to understand - him posting his slides certainly helped. The only problem with this class that I have is the down curving. I got a 94.78% and got an A-. Apparently the cut-off was 95% and there was no rounding. Ah well.

Also, the textbook is phenomenal! Highly recommend you read it, especially since it's available for free online.

Going to lecture is basically useless; discussions are helpful for the weekly projects though. I thought the assigned textbook readings were decent, but I don't think the professor has read them, so it's not really useful for the exams or anything. IMO the projects are way easier than 35L because the specs are very clear about what you have to do.