I took 131 and 130 with Eggert.

Eggert is very engaging as a lecturer in 131, and the material is interesting. The textbook is pretty good but not especially memorable. Exams have surprisingly low average scores. Why? You have to know not just the languages you learned, as well as the lecture and reading material, but you also have to know how to tackle somewhat open-ended questions by applying what you learned. And to *write*. Yes, my fellow programmers, you have to learn how to do this thing called writing. And unfortunately that's not taught in the class. If you are able though, try to find exams from past years to see the style of questions.

As for projects, let me say first that you can go see what they are: the class websites showing the projects from previous years stay up, and the projects rarely change. Some projects are kind of just crappy and dubiously relevant to the class (I'm thinking of the Java concurrency one in particular) but most are interesting, eye-opening, and yes, quite challenging. You need to think in a new way - and especially, think in the spirit of the language you are using. Start early.

Take Eggert, you'll like the lectures and you'll learn a lot.

(Millstein's a great guy too though.)

On the other hand, Eggert's 130 is horrible. I can't really blame him though, because I can see how hard it is to design a class on software engineering effectively.

I found the homeworks to be pretty interesting, but they're definitely time consuming, so start early. The exams are also as difficult as people say they are (we had an average of 51% on the midterm and 59% on the final). That being said, Professor Eggert is definitely enthusiastic about teaching the material and explains most concepts fairly well. I also recommend the textbook, because it came in pretty handy during the exams.

He is an amazing professor. Just go to his class for a few hours and you're off to the races. However, his projects are the STUPIDEST thing I have ever seen in my life. They take ridiculous amounts of time. They're fun as hell, I'll give him that, but he assigns them as though 131 was the only class you were taking.

For example. Homework #2. Took me 40 hours, started over 7 times. And I never even finished it. Most of the class didn't, from what I heard.

Anyway, tl;dr: this dude is a great professor, but someone needs to kick him in the friggen shins until he realizes that that's exactly how his projects feel to us.

CS 131 is an excellent course; however, it's very time consuming and very difficult. When I say time consuming, I literally mean 20-35 hours a week of working on his projects. Overall it's worth taking, especially since it's required anyway :)

I took CS 111 and 131 with Eggert and it was the best use of my time. Eggert is very knowledgeable, a great lecturer, has a lot of concern for his students' learning, and his assignments and tests are fair, though not necessarily easy. Thanks, Professor Eggert!