Eggert is an extremely smart, intelligent, funny, and insightful man; however, this does not always translate into a good teacher, and in the case of Eggert it depends on what the student puts in.

Eggert genuinely cares about his students knowledge, so much so that he purposely made his class have a very steep learning curve (as he made it clear by explicitly saying so in lecture). Eggert will come into class prepared to give very insightful lectures on whatever chapter he assigned for you to read in the textbook, but to even understand what he is talking about you need background knowledge and thus you must make an effort to learn the material BEFORE he lectures on it. There have been many lectures where I haven't read the chapter before hand and became completely lost simply because Eggert doesn't go backwards and explain a concept again unless you specifically ask him to (he is very nice and will go over anything you ask) but left on his own accord, he steamrolls ahead while you are left in the dust of your own confusion.

In addition to confusing lectures, that is nothing compared to the headaches you will receive from the project specs. Even in his specs, Eggert will believe that you always understand what he is saying without saying it and it shows when you have no idea even where to start in his project. Unlike Smallberg who explains in very good detail what is expected of you and how to approach it, Eggert barely explains what you need to accomplish. It seem at times even the TA's don't know the answers so you are forced to wait until the speak with the Professor once a week to know what you have to do.

And of course there are the dreaded tests. I have never been so unsure of my performance after a test as I have with Eggerts. Eggert will often ask one of two questions, a very very open ended question where you have to use the knowledge you learned in order to BS some answer to the best of your ability, or an problem whose answer relies solely on a very small detail you barely went over in class. Overall,they are incredibly difficult but if you know most of the concepts it is fairly easy to get above the average (as nearly no one understands anything).

Now having said all of this, I hope to take Eggert again. He is an engaging lecturer who care about the subject and his students, he just expects a huge amount of effort and creativity from them in order to do well. I know for a fact that I learned much more than those who took Reinmann's course but of course that comes with a cost as this was one of my most work intensive courses thus far while Reinmann's was an easy A or A+ for 90% of the class.
If I had to give any advice, take this course only if you want to learn. Really. I know it sounds stupid but if you just want a good GPA, an easy quarter, or you are taking this as a Tech Breath and aren't interested in a low level understanding of computers, then you are better off taking another Professor; but if this is what you came to UCLA to learn, I wouldn't waste an opportunity and take it with anyone else.

I'll keep it short. For everyone that has taken Eggert, you either really love him or you absolutely despise him. I fall into the latter category. Eggert is one of those professors that is just absolutely brilliant. Because of this, he doesn't know how to give a decent lecture that will be useful for his tests. His tests are insanely difficult, and unless you spend hours following him around and listening to him, there is no way to prepare for his midterms and final. It is common knowledge that Eggert makes up his tests on the fly (usually the night before or the morning of). The fact that his tests are .txt files should be clue that you are going to get wrecked in this class.

Now, if you already know the material, or are just one of those kids that learns material with ease, and is brilliant like Eggert, then go ahead and take this class. If you are a reasonably intelligent person like myself, who thinks and acts like normal students, then absolutely do not take this class (let alone any class if you can) with Eggert, as you will be miserable. The material covered in the book, and in most of his lectures is completely irrelevant to what will be tested as he doesn't even remember what he lectured about. I went to his office hours once to ask him the answer to one of the midterm questions. After staring at the question (for no lie) 20 minutes, he looked up at me and told me he had no idea what the answer was. Incredible.

Also, note that this isn't a typical computer science class, and you will be writing very little code. The test questions (for the most part) are all paragraph responses. In addition, the grade scheme (and solutions) for the test are written entirely by the TAs. That along with the fact that all projects are graded by the TAs just show that Eggert basically takes no part in your grade. If you get terrible TAs like I have had this quarter, then expect to be in for a rough quarter.

The class started out with full capacity (190 or so), plus the waitlist was full (with 35). After the first couple weeks, the waitlist was empty. After the first midterm, there were only 160 students in the class. After the 6th week to 8th week, there were only 130 or so kids left in the class. Just goes to show that taking CS33 with Eggert in the Fall is thee worst decision to ever make. Some argue that you learn more when you take it with him, but this is nonsense.

I don't hate Eggert as a person, as he is an incredibly cool and fun professor, and is one of the most intelligent professors I have had here. The fact that he is so smart, and knows everything about computer science is the reason why he can make up the tests the night before giving them. However, it would be a much smarter decision to take this class your first year if you can, and in the Spring with Professor Reinmann. His class is incredibly easy, he gives tons of extra credit, and about 60%+ of the class got A's last spring (no kidding). I know people that got C's and D's in CS31 and CS32 that ended up getting A's in CS33 with Reinmann. Due to my circumstances, I wasn't able to take it with him in the Spring, but I am giving this advice to help you plan your schedules now. Trust me, you will absolutely regret taking CS33 with Eggert in the Fall. I know upperclassmen that have gotten A's with Eggert, but have also said that his class was the worst. Just look at the grade distribution above. 8% or so got F's, and there were a bunch of C's and such. Only 18% got A's is the only thing you need to see to know that you will get wrecked vs. CS31 and CS32 where ~40% of the students got A's.

Okay, I lied this wasn't short, but I needed to rant about this course, CS33, the destroyer of worlds.

Unlike the first review here, my advice is to thoroughly read assigned readings on the course website and take down everything Eggert talked about in lectures. If you don't read those assigned readings, you won't understand anything from Eggert's lectures.

On his tests, there will be questions about what he mentioned in class in a few seconds. Most questions are "unrelated" to both the textbook and his lectures, but you will be able to reason many of them out if you understand 70% of the textbook and his lectures, In other words, you can 100 % work one question out if you understand concepts related to that question.

To get an A in Eggert's class is not difficult, but requires too much work.

Prof. Eggert really knows what's going on here, and his experience will bring you a lot of insight. His CS33 is not that desperate. I am not good at CS and I am able to get an A. I'd say if you put enough effort in it, you could get a good one since the exams are hard but normally curved.

For CS33 projects, they are alright. And there is a kind late policy so handing in late for a day or two will not greatly affect your grades. Just pay more attention on correctness.

To prepare Eggert's tests, it is important to go to lectures and take down every point he mentioned. His tests cover EVERYTHING. Lecture notes are materials that you have to go through before the exams. If you have time, reading textbook surely helps if you are not an experienced CS student (like me). Problems in textbook does not help much, though. There is probably not sufficient time (for me) to finish everything on the exams, so my strategy is to make sure what I did is as "correct" as possible.

I must say TA helps me survive this quarter. Luckily I got Uen-Tao this quarter and he is the best TA I've ever had. His discussions and slides are really helpful to understand the materials. The reason for this is that he goes to lectures! So he knows what happens during class and will cover the subtle points professor mentioned by few words in his discussion so I believe you could find some clues for the exams on Uen-Tao's slides. Uen-Tao also shares his lecture notes which could be a very good supplement of yours. Take this TA if he will TA in the future.

So Eggert's CS33 is doable. You surely need to pay more efforts on it, but you will get great returns.

Eggert was an interesting professor...
Please note that my final grade in the class was an A, so I probably had a different experience in the class than other people

Grading Distribution:
According to the 94 people (from a class of over 200) that reported their final grade on piazza, there were:
19% A's, 12% A-'s
15% B+'s, 14% B's, 10% B-'s
12% C+'s, 11% C's, 1% C-
7% D or lower
While this is not even close to a comprehensive grade distribution, it will hopefully serve to give you a somewhat better understand of how the grades for this class look like. Please note that these are self reported grades on piazza and are likely not exact representations of the whole population of the class (people that did very well, for example, might be motivated to vote and thus make it seem like there are more A's percentage-wise than he actually assigned)

Course workload:
This class was way too much work. There's a 1003 page book, out of which you're assigned to read over 85% of it. This book is very technical and thorough, and thus isn't something you can easily skim over. There's 4 labs, 3 of which were convoluted, complicated, ambiguous, and difficult. The 4th one was really easy compared to the other 3, but it turns out that Eggert accidentally assigned us a CS 35L lab instead of a CS 33 lab, so the 4th lab will likely be very hard in future cs 33's. Unlike cs 32 labs, which are very well defined, these labs are very ambiguous and it's hard to really know what they're asking for. These labs take less time overall than cs 32 labs, but they're still a huge pain because there are so many incorrect ways to interpret what Eggert wants us to do.

Tests:
These tests are ridiculously difficult. They're open book, open notes, open everything sans electronic devices, and have F averages.
Midterm 1 average: 42/108
Midterm 2 average: 60/108
Final average: 92/180
Reading the book, thoroughly understanding the basic ideas presented in the book, and knowing the book examples front and back might help you do a little bit better than average, but I wouldn't waste time reading the book for tests. You should read the book if you want to understand the concepts better, but topics discussed in the book don't really appear on the assessments (because the assessments are open textbook, so he obviously isn't going to ask anything that can be found in the book). The tests focus more on what he covered in class, so be sure to comprehensively review lecture notes.
An example of how his testing style goes based off a math analogy:
The book will tell you how to solve for y if 7 + y = 5 (y = -2) //very simple
In lecture, he'll show you how to solve for y if y^2-4=0 (y= +-2) //still pretty simple, but more in depth than the book
On the test, he'll ask you how to solve for y if y^3+y+10=0 (y has 2 imaginary roots and 1 real root, and this needs to be found by applying some complicated formulas) //how the hell do you do this
Overall, expect to leave the tests with your self-confidence shattered.

My tips:
Turn in the projects late, but make sure you finish them: there's a very generous lateness penalty (1% for 1 day late, 2% for 2 days late, 4% for 3 days late, and then it keeps increasing by a power of 2), so turn everything in late but make sure to finish everything.

Don't prioritize the textbook: I was short on time and generally too tired to understand the somewhat convoluted textbook, so I didn't read the textbook for the most part. I'm not saying you shouldn't read it at all, reading the textbook is better than not reading the textbook, but not reading the textbook won't hurt you too much. Just be sure to cram all of the TA lecture notes (I used Uen-Tao's notes, those were a life saver. On a sidenote, I must say that Uen-Tao was an amazing TA, I went to his discussion even though I wasn't enrolled in his discussion because he was so articulate; 2 hours with him was much more helpful than 4 hours with eggert) and review the TA discussion notes.

Be good at bsing: Be sure to have words written down answering every question (this will generally get you 1 or 2 points if they're even somewhat relevant), and be sure to copy down words that sound correct from Uen-Tao's lecture notes. I can guarantee you that random relevant information that Eggert said during lecture will earn you partial credit.

TA's are there for you: CS 31 and 32 are classes that are pretty easy to do well in if you're willing to put in time because the material itself is pretty easy. CS 33 is nothing like those classes; this class isn't something you should expect to be able to do based off your own intelligence. The TA's will be able to guide you on the right path to finish the assignments; getting A's on the labs will otherwise be very difficult and time consuming assuming you already have a very thorough understanding of the material. If you don't get the material, theres no way you can finish the labs without asking for help.

Overall, I wouldn't recommend taking this class if you can avoid it. Those of you taking it Fall 2015 are out of luck, but if people reading this review later on have a choice, take someone else. Eggert isn't a bad professor (he's very, very, very smart and if you can keep up with the reading, his lectures will greatly help you understand the material better), it's just that most people don't have the time/dedication to keep up with the difficult and tedious coursework that this class entails. In my opinion, I did terrible in this class. I just did less terrible than everyone else...