So, to get a good grade you need to start the projects early and get >90% on them. The majority of your grade stems from the midterm/final. To do well you need to be able to understand all of the concepts in the readings and on the slides. It's important to be able to recall examples/techniques to solve issues. It's a pretty hard class all in all, easier than 131 but harder than most CS classes.

The TAs are what make or break this class, they give advice for the projects. Kampe as a lecturer is normal, not super exciting. Not really sure how useful going to class is vs just reading the slides.

Boring + Terrible at explaining shit = Lectures have poor attendance
Quizzes are so picky that it's quite pointless
Tests are super picky too
tbh 111 is trash and kampe is too, so if you want a rough quarter, go for it

This professor is not popular among students. Quiz is hard but to be honest, it is not crazy. If you choose this professor, just utilize OH and he help you a lot before he gets bored and started making you feel like you are stupid.

NO RECOMMEND

CS 111 is a tough class under any professor, but if you're willing to work extra hard, do the readings consistently, and stay on top of things in general it's certainly possible to do well. Many other people have left much longer and better reviews, but overall Kampe is a quirky guy who is a decent teacher. I disagree with those who say he is an excellent lecturer - he's pretty good in that he presents the material in a somewhat interesting fashion, but a lot of the times he goes off on a (usually interesting) tangent and bores the whole class to death. After the midterm I did not attend the lectures.

The keys to this class are doing the readings, working in groups, and making sure you ace the projects. If you pay attention to the readings closely and make sure to master the key concepts (which he makes very clear) you should be very well prepared for the exam. The reading for the most part is great (from the Arpaci book) and Kampe/Reiher have also written some things themselves.

TA Zhaoxing Bu is legendary. Go to his discussion section (even if you're not in his section).

Let me start off by giving some context: I did all the readings, I attended/watched all the lectures (they were podcasted), I got 90% on both part 1 and 2 of the final, and ended up with an A in the class. The reviewer below me posted means for each exam if you're interested. Onto the review.

Lectures: Kampe is NOT, by any means, an engaging lecturer. Attendance dropped consistently throughout the quarter, and even among the people who went to class, some of them were on their phones the whole time. Yes, the material is dry and potentially hard to grasp, but Kampe's delivery of it certainly does not help. More than half the time all he does is regurgitate the reading, which seems redundant as he expects us to read and understand the material before coming to class (thus the point of the quizzes). I agree that it's important to do the readings before class, but shouldn't we use lecture to expand on ideas discussed in the readings (as Kampe himself promised us he would do)? And if the argument for reexplaining the material in class is because it's hard to understand, then how does he expect us to do well on the quizzes?

Quizzes: Two quizzes per week, 4-5 questions per quiz and 8 minutes to answer them. The questions are usually one of those "select one or more" multiple choice type or "select the right answer from a list" type. They aren't necessarily hard, but they can be really tricky (wording matters) and they definitely require you to remember basically everything in the readings, or at least in which reading a specific topic was covered so you can look it up when taking the quiz. I don't think the quizzes really helped me pick up anything, though I'd say they were pretty helpful in ensuring that students did the readings on time.

Exams: Lol. Each lecture has around 30-40 slides, he covers around 10 lectures per exam = at least 300 slides you have to memorize because exams are closed everything. And I mean really memorize. It's not enough that you have a high level understanding of how something works. If he lists out 10 steps for a page faulting process, you better remember every single step. This was actually one of our midterm questions, so if you were lucky enough to remember that one slide, you get 10 points for the question. Otherwise, good luck bs-ing your way through fam.

Projects: I honestly learned more from discussion than from lecture. Zhaoxing Bu is one of the most helpful CS TAs I've ever had. He's super knowledgeable about the projects and without him it would've been impossible to understand what's happening in the projects, especially for 3B as the specs are extremely vague. What do I mean by extremely vague? For example, we're supposed to find "invalid" and "reserved" blocks and generate an error message for each block found. But what exactly does "invalid" and "reserved" mean? Who knows? If you looked at last quarter's specs, definitions were actually given for each error! And guess who taught last quarter - Eggert, who is notorious for his supposedly bad specs.

With Zhaoxing's help, I thought the projects by themselves were okay. However, there were so many problems with grading/the grading scripts that emailing the graders got really old after a while. For example, I got a random -5% for P4B even though nothing was wrong with my program. After emailing the grader, I ended up getting the 5% back. Expect to send a lot of emails to the graders.

Textbook: My favorite CS textbook by far and easily the best thing about this course. I wasn't interested in OS at all before taking 111, but this book was accessible enough that I was able to firmly understand and even enjoy the material. Bless Arpaci.

First of all, Professor Kampe is a professional. He is one of the best lecturers that I have had at UCLA. Then again, I have yet to have a bad CS lecturer at UCLA (Smallberg, Nachenberg, Eggert, Reiher are all legends), except for Professor Ercegovac (but the book was very thorough, so I stopped attending his lectures).

Don't get me wrong this class was very difficult. But it only has this reputation due to the incredibly heavy workload. There are many readings that you need to do each week to be prepared for his online quizzes. Even though I hated the quizzes (even though I did fairly well on them), they forced the students to do the readings, which is an excellent strategy to make the students keep up to date with the material. If it weren't for the quizzes (two a week), I most likely wouldn't have done the readings (as most other students wouldn't either). However, due to the quizzes, I was forced to be engaged while doing the readings, which helped me to learn the material quite well. By doing the readings and attending his lectures (which if you pay attention are incredibly engaging as he is a superstar lecturer), I was able to perform exceedingly well on the exams as compared to the other students (I got a 97% on the midterm, avg was about a 72, and a 91% on final part 1, avg was about a 70, and a 82% on final part 2, avg was about a 65).

Whether you take this class with Professor Kampe or Professor Eggert (or perhaps Prof. Reiher), the course is going to be difficult; that is why it is known as a capstone course. The projects can be lengthy, and the specifications aren't always the best, but if you utilize Piazza, and do the appropriate amount of research, you should be fine.

It was stated in the syllabus, and in the first lecture that the course wouldn't be graded on a curve, but on a straight scale. However, he ended up curving the class anyway. This could be due to everyone performing fairly poorly on the quizzes, exams, and projects, or that he was always planning to curve the course. Either way, he did and don't listen to the few people below me. Their reviews aren't honest, and they most likely didn't attend lectures, or didn't do the readings. Lastly, like with basically every class at UCLA, the discussion sections (and the TAs) are pretty much useless, and not helpful. I will say that TA Zhaoxing Bu did a pretty good job though (while the other TAs not so much). Also, the grading scripts for every project were basically busted, so if you get a low score, ask the TA to regrade it manually. For example, on project 1b, I got a 65%, asked to do a regrade, and got a 100%.

Good luck!

Do not take this class with this man.

I'm surprised no one rants here. You need 94 in total to get an A when only 15 people are above 90 in part 1 of the final and 8 people are above 90 in part 2 of the final. (Update: apparently he changed the break down points, which can boost him from a 1 to a 2.)

Project specs are changed after due date. Sanity check and grading script is incoherent.
Need to pay 10 points of late penalty for using the right make clean targets.
Never provide enough detail for project 3. No sample output for project 3 like previous quarters.

His lectures are long and boring. He tries to explain but his explanation is so convoluted that you understand even less after listening to it.

I can't believe anyone can praise this guy. Avoid him and take Eggert it you can.