Shout out to Ian Sommervill. Congratulations for writing the most boring textbook I've read in my life.

I'm hesitant to post a review for this class because you really don't have a choice on who to take it with since Eggert is the only professor that has taught it in recent memory.

130 is kind of a crappy class. Not at all difficult, just crappy. Tons of assigned reading and quizzes every class. Eventually you learn to ignore the readings and just fake it on the quizzes since they aren't worth much of your grade. The project is worth 40% of your grade, and with our client it was pretty easy (definitely doable in a hackathon context, so not overly time consuming considering you have 5-7 people on the team). The Midterm and Final are open book and open notes, but if you take notes on this class you will probably want to kill yourself, and you are already ignoring the reading assignments, so your best bet is to get someone to make a copy of their class notes for you and borrow some poor sucker's copy of the books (or use your free/cheap printing to print the PDFs that are easy to find with a google search).

At the first lecture the class is billed as one of the most useful classes you will take. I'll let you decide for yourself, but I don't believe it.

I take many classes with Eggert, and this class is particularly BAD! Eggert is known for hard class, so he is trying to make this class hard as well. Since the topic of the class is by nature easy, he chooses to torture students with unnecessary big amount of reading, random questions in quiz and ridiculous exams. Frankly I think he pretty enjoys keeping people busy, no matter it really helps students or not.

Quarter is not even over yet, and I can't stand the class anymore. Eggert for CS130 is fucking lame.

First of all, context:
CS130 is where you learn software developement cycles. The different stages of developing software, good software practice, etc.

Eggert being Eggert, potentially fun class projects turned into misery. This class can be so much fun if students got to work on their own projects that they were passionate about, projects that they can take with them after school is over and continue working on it. With good software design/practice, I believe students can come up with amazing stuff.

Instead, I'm fucking sitting here working on a software for my 'Client' that I dont give a shit about. The 'Client' is bitching that they want 'this' and 'that' functionality in their software. With the amount of tuition I pay, I feel like I'm paying for the opportunity to work of these 'Clients'.

Taking CS130 with Eggert will teach you how to become a corporate bitch.

This class can be much more fun if students get to decide on projects with classmates that they are all passionate about and work together to turn their ideas into reality. Let the students take leadership of their projects.

I hate this class.

CS 130 Mid-Review

Foreword: If you has not taken cs 131 and cs 111, I recommend that you have to do so before taking cs 130. Why? because cs 130 = cs 111 x cs 131. How so? in cs 130, you expect to design like in cs 111, and learn new stuff quickly like in cs 131.

Class: I would not even start by saying this class is easy. The complexity of this class comes from the people who enrolls, not from the project you do. You will put in a team of 5. 5 people team is so much different from pair in term of group dynamic. Of course, when you go out to industry, you also are put into a group of even larger size. Surely, you want to have the experience of team work. I can give you all of that in this post. You don't even need to take this class.

Grading: The TA will grade your work in term of quality, both code and final product, base on industry standard or aka real-life standard. Surely, you know this is how it goes for every other cs class. The difference is in any other class, you have a clear checklist of what will grade like correctness on various assumptions, only a subset of real-life standard; in this class, the list is way longer and way bigger and is enforced by the two textbooks. Fulfilling this checklist requires a team. There is no way, you can do it unless you do not have any other class and you have no life. The problem boils down is the team problem.

Team:

List of Not-To-Expect:
1. Don't expect the TA and Eggert to look out for you.
2. Don't expect the TA will put you in a 'good' team. I am put into a team of slackers. I will tell you later.
3. Don't expect to know whether your team is slacker or not when you first meet them.
4. Don't expect everyone who enrolls into cs 130 is not a slacker. In other word, don't expect them to follow your standard of team ethics.
5. Don't expect to know the projects before week 1. Although, there are 2 projects will be always around: IBM Web Mashup project and Eggert's Coreutilies.
6. Don't expect your team mate to do anything. If you expect your team mate to do something, and in the midnight just before the deadline, you have nothing to show for it, because you team mate didn't do his/her part.
7. Don't expect to tell your team mate to do anything, because you have absolutely no partner. You try to nag them. When they don't do anything, they will just don't do anything.
8. Don't expect your teammate be arround during first 3 weeks. They can quit the class any time.

List of Be On Guard and Project Yourself:
0. During first 3 weeks, you have options: quitting the class and change project. Don't let go of these opportunities without using them.
1. You will receive email from TA states your team base on your preference of projects on Monday of the second week. Your team has to turn in a schedule. If no one talks about it, change team immediately or quit the class. If no one talks about their expected contribute times for the class, change team or quit the class. Of course, I consider these advice are not realistic, because if you expect to change team, then you violate the #1 item on List Of Not-To-Expect. You cannot change class, because it would result in violation of minimum class unit per quarter requirement.
2. Understand the flaw of this class's simulation of software engineering.

a. Manadatory teamming: checked. In real life, you can't choose who you work with.
b. TA and Eggert will play the role of consumer and judge your product's quality: checked. Grading will be done very harshly.
c. Pay check: surely, you consider grade as money.
d. Management: unchecked. Management is the power to enforce productivity. In this quarter, since many team complains about the team problem a lot, and it is too late in the quarter. Eggert can't change team now. So he make a end-of-quarter report indicate who did what basic. It can be very detail and can be very simple like "each team member does 25% of the work." - Joseph (TA for this quarter). However, this report must be done on consensus decision-making (wikipedia look it up). Yes, you can submit a side private report indicate your point of view. Why is management unchecked? in real life, you have "quarterly review". Each person in a team must do a private "quarterly review" about everyone else in the team. "Quarterly review" determines raise or no raise. The key is private vs consensus decision-making.
e. Team Communication: this is done depend on team. For my team, they hardly communicate. Please do not use the reason like "I have midterm and I have that project for this weekend and that." This make you look like an idiot. Why? you think I do not have something else to do. UNCHECKED.

The flaw here is there is no management. The quarter only has 10 weeks. You ALWAYS think about yourself first when your team mate violates ANY of the following team responsibilities:

List of Team Responsibilities:
1. By whatever mean of communication, you always reply whenever your team mate asks in 12 hours. In my case, they don't even reply my email. I come to class and ask them directly if they see my email. They say yes. Then I ask them why don't you reply? They say they forget. That is definitely a lie. My question was stuff required a long research to find out the answer. My question can be answered immediately.
2. If you cannot show up for a meeting online or off-line, NOTIFY your team mate BEFOREHAND. No one need to know the fact afterward. No notification here.
3. ... More to add...

Oh ONE FINAL THING: you have quiz EVERY DAY on reading of 100-300 page basis. Each quiz contribute 0.5% to your final grade. 8% total. The reading fills with materials. If you can cramp the material into your head, then you are good to do. On top of this, there paper work you have to do while you team mate expect not to do anything. That is not all, even if you have a team full of slacker, you expect to compete with other good team in grading. They could get better because their team works together.

My mid-term advise: DON'T TAKE THIS CLASS. TAKE THE ALTERNATIVE. COM SCI M151B. Computer Systems Architecture when enrolling your first pass.

There are two parts to this class: the team project, and the tests (midterm and final)

The tests focus on theory, which you get by going to lecture and reading the book. If you do one, you don't really need the other one, in my opinion. Eggert is a great lecturer and his test was incredibly easy for me. It is more North-campusy, meaning the questions are open-ended. Just show you know the material decently well and argue your point. I got a 91% on the midterm (studied for 1 hour, but I did the readings and went to lecture), but the average was around 75!!! I guess most CS people can't handle open-ended questions....

The team project is where you put theory into practice. You choose a real-world project that is being offered by a real-world client. It will probably end up taking a lot of time, but you LEARN SOOOOO MUCH. It is the real-deal; a software engineering project from start to finish.

So, Eggert did a great job.