Professor Ghaforyfard's lectures are quite underwhelming. In addition to the dry nature of the CS 33 material, the professor is not very enthusiastic at explaining concepts, making the lectures more boring. The labs were fun and engaging, but the exams were long and difficult. Also, the professor did not give a clear breakdown of the grading cutoffs and did not seem to have curved the class. Overall, I would not take this class again.

Professor Ghaforyfard's lectures were extremely dry/boring. The labs were doable (and actually pretty interesting), but she gave very little guidance, resulting in most of us resorting to doing extra research by ourselves and asking the TAs. The only savior of this class were the TAs – they gave us starting guidelines for each lab and actually hosted really interesting sections.

The midterm was fine, but she directly copied questions from a former CS 33 exam (that the TAs sent us beforehand as practice?? ) and ended up removing those points from the midterm, lowering all of our grades because instead of like 100 points, it was out of 55 points. At one point, I think she considered adding a second part on top of an already 3 hour timed final to test the topics from the questions she removed from the midterm. This didn't end up happening, literally because there are UCLA guidelines for ensuring finals are within 3 hours and that students should not be punished for the miscommunication (and should not be punished for the professor not writing original exam questions). The final ended up being pretty hard, but she offered extra credit, so that was nice.

I did well in the class, but I would not recommend taking this with Professor Ghaforyfard, as it pretty much tanked my interest in this subject. I was pretty disappointed with the quality of this class and the kinda unreasonable decisions of the professor (mentioned above), and I would recommend taking it with any other professor.

AAAAAAAAAAH Ghaf why you gotta do us like this

Overall, I didn't really like this class much and the material wasn't very interesting. As for the professor, she cares about giving lectures and means well, but that doesn't change the fact that her lectures are pretty lackluster and not really engaging at all. Pace was too slow, and we didn't cover nearly as much as a typical CS 33 class would during the regular school year.
The labs and homework assignments are well designed, but the tests kill. They're online using CCLE, so grading is often inflexible, and it's very easy to make mistakes. Midterm was kinda tough, but final was absolutely terrible. I bombed it after having gotten full credit on nearly everything else in the class and ended up with a B. I need to emphasize this, but she did NOT curve at all for this class, contrary to what the case with the previous summer's review said. Pretty disappointing, but don't count on anything. All in all, I'd highly recommend you take Nowatski or Reinman during the school year over this class.
Also, the textbook readings are helpful for this class as well.

She's not good enough at lecturing to justify how unhelpful and hostile she is. If I actually attended lecture I'd be scared to ask questions.

Really easy class, but decided to curve everyone down. Also I'm taking this during the pandemic, so double whammy.

Took this class online during summer 2020, and the professor was not a particularly good lecturer in my opinion. Some crucial topics were glossed over, while other less important or trivial topics sometimes would get a lot of lecture time. Explanations weren't exactly clear and it probably would've been a struggle if the material was anything more than introductory.

More importantly, however, the professor acted very unprofessionally at times - for example, using a condescending tone when people asked questions. I felt that 99% of people who asked questions and didn't get a clear answer never asked for further clarification despite obviously not having their question answered, because she would often say things like "I just covered that in lecture" and other remarks that pretty much discouraged questions and made people feel stupid for asking them. She also seemed to misinterpret a lot of questions, which made for very ineffective Q+A's during lecture.

Some other things that happened:

-Midterm was at a set time, completely disregarding those in different time zones. A lot of foreign students probably ended up having to stay up until 3 AM or some other ridiculous time to take the midterm. An 1-on-1 oral exam was offered to those who couldn't make the original time, but I would much rather take a standard online exam for obvious reasons - a 1-on-1 would probably be extremely stressful, and you really don't have as much freedom to think through your answers, let alone check them.

-Class ended up being downcurved (with reports of 95% A-'s), despite not being mentioned in the syllabus.

-Professor publicly called out names of people challenging the aforementioned midterm policy on Piazza, even though they posted anonymously (I am fairly certain she was aware they were posting anonymously)

Overall this class just felt like an afterthought. Often times the professor wasn't prepared for her lectures, forgetting to include slides into the powerpoints. She would lecture and assume that we already had a grasp on the NEW concept that she was teaching us, often just reading off the slides and not really explaining any of the content. During the lecture, she would often say "you know..." and would never explain the topics even though we are just learning them.
The textbook and TA's were ESSENTIAL. The TA's in less than half the time would easily explain the concepts better than the professor, give us guidance on the project, and answer questions that went unanswered in class while the textbook actually gave useful examples and visuals that were lacking in lectures.
The midterm and finals were also kinda BS and lazy; she copied almost half the midterm from the first quarter and was about to add additional questions to our final to cover up her mistake. Additionally, we were told the final was to include questions from the whole curriculum of the quarter, but almost every question was literally from the last 2 weeks. Additionally, the test was SUPPOSED to be EASILY taken in under 3 hours, and from a majority of the people I talked to, including me, this was nowhere near the case.
Avoid this class if you can, I don't know the circumstances of the professor but it is obviously a detriment to the learning of her students.

Looking at the previous year's reviews, I was definitely a bit nervous going into this class, but prof definitely surprised. She addressed all the feedback she had received on the first day of class and actively ensured we didn't have the same problems.
> 5% homework, 20% worth of 4 quizzes, 35% midterm, 40% finals
> Quizzes: We had pretty easy quizzes (4 of them over the 8 weeks), and the questions were similar to the homework. They were 1 hour quizzes and open for 24 hours so definitely accommodative to different time zones. Would've appreciated it if they were graded faster though, so we could actually figure out what we did wrong before the exams.
> Homework: We had a few questions assigned every week (although she did skip 1-2 weeks) and they were pretty easy to do if you attended the lecture and offered great practice for the quizzes. The only disappointing thing is that it's worth 5% and it would've been nice for it to be worth more given we spend a while on it every week.
> Discussion: The TA was great but discussions for online classes just end up being super noninteractive so it would get a bit slow and awkward. Shout out to Salekh for being an amazing TA!
> Lectures: She doesn't use slides but she makes notes during class and walks us through several examples of different question types which are similar to the ones we are tested on. She's pretty willing to answer questions and we can always go during office hours, ask on Piazza, or email. The lack of slides can be a little monotone sometimes but honestly if you're watching a recording at a faster speed, it isn't a problem.
> Tests: We had one midterm and a final- both of which were pretty fair. I personally felt like the final was easier than the midterm. She doesn't curve but if you go through all the class examples and back questions in the book, you'll do well. You do need to move fast since questions have parts that depend on each other so getting one part wrong might affect your points for the remaining parts.

Overall, it went better than expected and I appreciate the prof working on feedback.

Got a good grade, horrible professor though. You learn nothing compared to the other professors who teach this class (and I'm batsh*t scared I will be woefully unprepared for M152A and M151B).

....guys I'm not even mentioning her terrible teaching style, communication skills, and willingness to be open to students. Just don't even try to ask her any questions. Also, the textbook is your friend.

AVOID AT ALL COSTS.

god i hated onenote so much more after this class.