Eggert. That is all that needs to be said.

Completely agree with the previous reviews. The difficulty and workload of this course is beyond ridiculous. Be prepared for a rough quarter if you do decide to take cs 131 with the project lead of the tz database.

Homeworks were so long and hard that it was even funny. HW 2 and 5 were the challenging ones, but IMO the hardest was HW 3 (Java), the one about multithreaded gzip compression. We had less than a week to do that one, which was not nearly enough time. The only upside about this quarter's HW was that we had an autograder to test our submissions.

As usual with Eggert's exams, they have medians of ~ 50 percent and it is very hard to study for them. While many of the written conceptual questions are quite fair given what was covered in lecture, others were not. Many questions had very little to do with the lectures and seemed so random that you could only make an educated guess and move on.

On the bright side, I'm impressed by the TAs for this iteration of cs 131 (s/o to Matthew Wang and Ashwin Ranade). They were very helpful in explaining key programming languages concepts and clarifying assignment specs on Campuswire. TA Matthew even organized a review session the week before the final to go over the most important concepts in this course and answer any questions students had. And many of the key ideas Matthew emphasized in the review session did end up making its way onto the final!

Looking back, I'm grateful that I learned a lot about PLs and more importantly, how to think critically (mostly from the TAs, less so from Eggert). But given the choice, would I choose to take cs 131 with Eggert? Hell no!

Homework 2 and homework 3 are so ridiculous this class should never ever exist. Please just take it with Carey.
Just to add to this - homework 5 sucks too. Fuck Eggert.

Everything you've heard about this class is true. The homeworks are awful and nearly impossible to do. The exams are the hardest things you've seen in your life and even Eggert talks about how this class has way more work than you should expect.

Now, even after saying all of this, I have learned so much from this one class and I think I would still take this again especially since it felt so rewarding after I was done.

Now, here is my unsolicited advice on how you can do well in this class. The breakdown was: 24% Homeworks (each 4%), 8% Project, 24% Midterm, 44% Final

The very first thing I recommend doing is starting the homeworks early. Literally the day or the day after they get out. If you're able to stay on top of them and finish them a few days before they're due, then you'll do great in this class. Don't be afraid to ask the TA's for help and make sure you understand the rationale and reasoning on why things are the way they are.

When you eventually fall behind, don't be afraid to just turn in an unfinished homework. It's honestly worse to take the late days because the work just starts pilling up so quickly and coding with deadlines is never a good idea. Given that, it is super important that you get the basic idea of what you would have needed to do (and why you need to do it like that) even if you don't get it working.

For the Project, spend as much time as you can on this. Test your code and make sure that your report is really good. There are a lot of edge cases that are not explained. Check Piazza, so you can keep up to date with the various edge cases people think of because you won't get all of them.

Now, for the Midterm/Final, to add on to what everyone else says, I would also recommend studying by trying to connect the various topics he talks about. For example, think about Garbage Collection methods and the issues that could arise if Java used Python's Garbage Collection. Overall, I studied by trying to connect the topics when I was writing my study guide(had to make 2) and then looking at a few practice exams to see if I knew how to approach it. I was able to do really well on the final and average on the midterm

Good luck to whoever read all of this, you're going to need it

This class is awful as everyone else says. Prepare yourself for an awful quarter with ridiculous projects and un-passable exams.

how could this guy keep lecturing in such a prestigious school?
it really hurts me that I'm paying about thousands of dollars just to take this kind of shitty, fucked up class.
getting rid of professors like this would be the first step to develop this school.
FUCK YOU EGGERT

This class is hard as hell. Eggert is an incredibly smart man, and a very good lecturer. But he's a pretty tough professor. Exams are classic Eggert, I think both our midterm and final averages were around 45%, obviously with a hefty curve (although very non-transparent since it only happens for the final grade, so I had no idea what grade to expect until it was posted). The assignments are tough, with low means as well. Projects 2 and 5 are the classic hard ones, but 3 was definitely the hardest for me. 1 4 and 6 are much easier. There is thankfully a very generous late policy, as with all of his classes. TA discussions are crucial to success on the assignments and exams. Overall, the class was very difficult, but I definitely learned a LOT about programming languages, which is the goal of the course. But be prepared for a tough quarter if you're taking this class. I didn't really enjoy it during the quarter, but in hindsight, I'm grateful to have learned so much and to have been exposed to a lot of new ideas and ways of thinking.

Just an average CS guy but this class almost had me drop out of college. My only motivation at time was only because I'm so close to graduating

Yes, it's hard, but Eggert is a great lecturer and the content is good. One of the best CS classes here overall

All I gotta say is, it is a goddamn miracle that I passed this class.

That is all.