Just FYI: I received less than 95% and an A in Summer 2020, so the review that says "only achieving above 95% will give you an A" is false. Also, that review has other misleading information, like “his homework allows no mistakes.” I didn’t get 100% for each HW…

I had no prior coding experience, but this class is really doable for beginners. Professor Andrews is an excellent professor who is genuinely passionate about teaching. Taking his class was always a pleasure. He explained everything clearly, and his teaching style is so effective because he is knowledgable, witty, engaging, and thorough. I seldom got absent-minded following his lectures.

Some homework is a bit challenging, but most of them can be solved if we review the snippets carefully. Sometimes I did experience the situation where I had no idea how to write the code for HW, but we can always go to office hours to ask. Professor Andrews is so helpful that he will give us useful hints or explain the logic behind each question. So even if I was new to coding, I never felt stressed taking this class. If you worry about the grade of HW, just start them early and ask when having problems, then everything will be fine!

Tbh among the classes taken, Professor Andrews is the one who cares most about students and holds far more office hours than other profs. He is so nice and patient. Really, highly recommend this class!!

For not having ever taken a coding class, Andrews class was VERY manageable for me. He really cares about his student's learning and has made accommodations for students during difficult times due to COVID-19 and police brutality. His TAs also care a lot about their students and overall I am very happy that I took this class. He made his midterm more about learning and explaining our thought process behind the solutions rather than actually grading us based on our answers. Our intitial midterm score was not even graded, just something for him and ourseleves to look at. Overall, Andrews is the way to go for PIC 10A

Professor Andrews was seriously the best professor I have had. His lectures were literally just him coding in xcode on the projector and were very easy to follow. He would allow plenty of time for questions of all kinds and would give very clear answers. The homework was sometimes time consuming, but as a complete beginner to any kind of programming I found them engaging and definitely doable. I loved this class and mjandr really opened my eyes to the creative possibilities of coding. I cannot recommend this class or professor enough!

I took (and failed) PIC10A with a different professor so I feel that my perspective is well informed.

The other professor used slides and did NOT treat this class like a beginner's class. I struggled hard core in that class, and I ended up failing it.

Andrews was very clear - he coded as the class went on so it was easy to follow along and not fall asleep. I also loved that he treated the class like a beginner's class, the way it is meant to be. If you do not know C++ ahead of taking PIC10A, Andrews is your best bet. The homeworks were still difficult, but far less difficult than my previous instructor's assignments. Same with exams - they were VERY doable compared with my previous instructor (instead of having the entire exam be 'write this entire code/program' it was 'what is the problem with this code?').

If you are not a coding god, I cannot recommend Andrews enough as a very fair, but still slightly challenging, PIC10A professor. Shoutout to him for helping me save my GPA.

Tips: START THE HW at least a little early so you have time to ask for help during office hours if need be. Make friends with students who have their sh*t together. Do practice problems from the textbook (i.e. coding functions) because similar ones show up on the tests. If your TA is crappy go to another TA's discussions, because they help.

Professor Andrews is one of the best professors you can take! I took his class during Summer 2020, and he was very understanding of the situation, offering office hours almost every week day, at different times to accommodate for everyone. You can also easily reach him by email. Lectures are recorded, and HW is manageable if you stay on top of things. The TA was also a great help (thanks Andy). I was new to coding except for a little Python from the Physics 4 labs, but this class is geared toward newcomers, and Professor Andrews definitely treated it that way. There was one midterm and one final, both which were doable as long as you paid attention throughout the quarter. If you are new to coding and see Professor Andrews listed, take his class! Especially if it is taught online, as he is always ready to help and the way this class is run is very fair. Not to mention he has a great sense of humor.

This class caused me sooooo much stress. I don't know what happened the quarter I took it but I did not find Michael to be that great of a teacher, at least not for an intro class. He clearly knew a lot about the subject but his logic was not always clear and I often lost him during lecture. To put this into perspective, the average of the midterm was a 52%, two thirds of the class did not pass the exam, and a third of the class got BELOW a 30%, a third! That is ridiculous in my opinion, scores that bad cannot all be due to the students. I got a 35% on the midterm, which really made me consider making the class p/np, but I studied super hard for the final, got a D, and ended with a B+ because of the curve and because I got 100 in the hw category (average for the final was a 56%). So it is possible to do well, just gotta be willing to give this class a LOT of time and effort.

For those who said Andrews was the “best” Professor, seriously dude? With much tears and regret, I dropped the class a day before the finals week.

Dr. Andrews is very smart. I will give him that. He knows what he's talking about and can clearly show you what is going on in the code. The problem arises in the fact that he himself was not a very interactive lecturer. The class honestly asynchronous class because he would have you watch videos beforehand and give quizzes based on the video (graded on completion) and go over the quizzes within the class. Because of this, the class did not become as engaging as I would have liked it to be and it also made the understanding of the basics contingent upon how well you can understand the videos and textbook (both of which could be quite a bit unclear at times). He was a bit rude (I don't think he intended to come off like that but whenever questioned something or whenever there were clarifications he always seemed to push back a little bit which makes it discouraging). His cutoff for an A is high, but he does change it so you're not required to have the 95% he states in the syllabus for an A. This was a summer class and I had many things going on. I personally did not put in enough effort to get an A and fully deserve n A-. However if you do take this class, it is not a free A you will have to work for it somewhat.

Wow this professor has a gift for teaching!
He is great to take with zero programming experience.
His lectures are quality, engaging, and stick to your brain.
He does mention it is possible to pass the class without getting the textbook. Focus on lectures and pay sharp attention to his snippets and you'll do good.

Homework is almost weekly (he extends due date near midterm season).
Try to start it early and go to the office hours. He is so helpful in his office hours. Even when you are completely stuck at the very beginning of a question, he gives useful hints. There were a few questions where the code was similar to the snippets, but needing some tweaking.
There is one homework you cannot drop near the end, I think it was somewhere around the 6th homework, the one with classes/structures. For this homework I used the snippets as a "template" or groundwork to help me.

There is 1 midterm and 1 final. For both tests, he is crystal clear in his expectations. He gives you a chunk of code and it is more of explaining definitions, vocabulary, and concepts of why the code works, instead of like solving for the needed code in the homework. He does help by giving sample question/answer and is very willing to explain his expectations in office hours. For the midterm, he gave ample time to prepare. For the final it is mostly the material after the midterm. He even held multiple office hours during both the midterm and the final.

For me the reason why I wanted to give a review was because of what I experienced. Sometime before the final, I had an emergency surgery where 5 teeth (all 4 wisdom plus 1 tooth) were pulled out because of an extremely bad infection. So bad my brain was under very strong, heavy pain meds for a week and I couldn't talk/think well for two weeks and I was unable to attend class for some time. Despite this, the professor allowed an extension and homework drop (technically two if the last homework doesn't count, depends on the quarter). Additionally, during my recovery he was very responsive with the many emails I sent him in clarifying concepts and the homework. Even on the days I didn't have class, he would still respond to my numerous emails on questions about the homework with clear explanations. He was very understanding of me and in my class his final thankfully didn't test on week 10 material.

This professor is amazing! He recently won a teaching award. I learned so much from his class.
Even though I had a big surgery and was recovering, I was still able to pass and enjoy taking his class with an A.
Please do not be afraid to take this class.

Overall, I enjoyed my experience with Professor Andrews! I had very little prior experience programming and I personally really, really liked his lecture style of coding directly on the screen as it was much easier to apply lecture knowledge directly to homework + review, in comparison to slides.

He was also very accommodating with COVID-19 and participation in lecture/discussion was not mandatory. The grading structure was 75% HW, 10% midterm, 15% final. We had around 6 HW assignments (there was actually 7 total, but everyone get full credit for the 7th one), with none dropped since HW was weighted so highly.

The homework can be challenging but plenty of time is given to work on each assignment (~1 week and sometimes more), and if you go to office hours he is very helpful with going through how to tackle the logic of each problem. Although discussions weren't mandatory I found my TA's to be very helpful! Helpful tips: Always read through the directions/guidelines for HW thoroughly, if you're on a Mac make sure to run your code through Visual Studios even if you feel confident, start HW early (I'm guilty of starting some of the assignments the day they were due but would not recommend), DO NOT re-name function names (or else your code won't compile on the grader's computer), and attend OHs if you're struggling!

I also really liked the untraditional midterm and final structure. The "short" exam solutions were posted by the professor (aka the answers alone), and students submitted detailed, "perfect" solutions to the exams at end of week. These solutions needed to include diagrams similar to the ones the professor drew in class, along with key terms and concepts to really show your understanding of the question.