assignment 9 was pretty horrible. it was a completely new assignment that the TAs were like "we haven't started it either so we can't help you yet and we have no idea as well what its about" so basically you head into week 10 with no time to study for your finals because you ahve to wait until monday or tuesday to see if you can get any hints from your lab section but as usual, you don't get anything so you just gotta do the assignment yourself, cry a lot, finally give up, but you've already lost so many hours of precious study time on this assignment -- if you get this same assignment start on it as soon as possible and never have hope that your lab section will give you any hints on how to start, for any project. the other assignments obviously took a super long time but it was a whole learning process and less stressful than assignment 9 because you don't need to worry as much about not having time to study for all your other classes's exams that are worth half your grade, ya know? and it was graded so, so harshly... no mercy or help at all but I guess you will also experience this amount of stress and pressure in the workplace allegedly. sounds like I will be changing majors so I can avoid these kinds of workplaces.
kedar is a fantastic ta he is so nice.
the final sucked so bad i dont remember any of it other than it being one of the most horrible experiences ever.

the workload is too much and u r not gonna learn much. The class is designed to make you hate com sci. If you are a genius, forget what I just said. But if u r checking this, u r probably not.

Half the assignments consist of Eggert flexing on all of us about how he contributed to Linux coreutils. The lab sections' quality varies drastically since the class isn't standardized with one lecture, and obviously TAs vary. Most assignments are vaguely written up and expect you to be an almost-expert on the topic after learning about it for the first time for an hour and a half. The 3-unit listing is incredibly deceiving — the assignments are exceptionally time-consuming (particularly 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 — almost of all of them at this point) if you aren't well-versed in the topics the way Eggert has been for decades.

The final was by far the worst final I've taken. He and his TAs' goal in writing the common final is having a median of 50%, but they slightly missed the mark on that with a median around 54% (*gasp*). The variations from question to question are rather drastic; a few are reasonably written to test your grasp of concepts, but others ask you to demonstrate proficiency in writing full-featured scripts/programs using a variety of languages and libraries by hand. Your score on the final might as well have been generated by a random number generator designed to have a mean of 50 and a standard deviation of 10.

His assignment late policy was rather lenient, though. That might be the only redeeming quality. Some of the topics covered in 35L are relatively important and practical, but overall this class is designed incredibly poorly.

This class sucks because of the weekly homeworks that are time consuming. I believe there are 2 in particular that really suck and the rest are ok. I would personally start like thursday/friday and be able to finish by saturday midnight. I stopped going to discussion after a while because you can effectively read the slides and get all the info you need. However, as a CS major, I will say that this class is REALLY useful and its probably worth it to learn everything you can. The final was really hard. I had 103 degree fever while taking it so it just felt like a fever dream and the only thing I remember about it was that it was hard. I do remember that there was one question which seemed really unrelated to any of the projects we did. But in general all the questions are supposed to be based off one of the homework. Also the lab portion of each homework is too long to do in lab so be prepared to do that at home too.

This class sucked p bad. Not really sure what I gained from this class. Partially to my own fault due to not trying as hard as I could have, but also the level of difficulty for each assignment was kind of ridiculous. I'd go to Lab and feel like I learned something, yet I'd start an assignment and often times have literally 0 clue how to do what I wanted to do. It felt like I got exposed to many topics, yet learned almost nothing. Completely unrelated topics each week definitely didn't help. It was a bad time. Just get it over with

oh my god... like the other posts, all I can say is good luck on this final because it is the hardest thing I have ever seen, and if you were able to finish within the 3 hours with decent confidence, then good luck in all your future endeavors. As for the other 99% of us....my god.

LABS/HW: The other posts are pretty spot on--expect to put in a lot of time and thought into the labs each week (the first 4 weeks are god awful, especially week 2's shell scripting, but get much better towards the latter half of the quarter). I can't really say much besides that, some are doable, some aren't without clarification. I have to admit I did find some of the labs enjoyable, and definitely learned a lot about software construction so don't think this class is a complete waste.

FINAL: Basically 50% of your grade is based on this test. 17 pages of the most brutal questions. Yeah, I said 17 pages... Obviously I do not know my score/grade yet writing this post, but after walking out of this shaft of a test I just want to pass the class at this point. Definitely much harder than Winter 2019's final exam, which we got as practice. It's honestly all partial credit at this point. I cannot even give you tips on how to study besides printing out the labs. Our Lab Slides had one keyword without much context, and Eggert writes a whole 10 point question on it. Literal BS you'd probably score higher guessing. Just get through this "3 unit class" and move on to better things. good luck comrades

Rarely do I write BruinWalk reviews, but I thought I'd write this class one just so some student doesn't make the same mistakes I did. Other reviews did a good job describing the workload, all I can say is so long as you are comfortable with Linux you should be fine for the projects, if not I can't speak to that.

However, even still, don't discount this class as an easy A just because you know Linux. I say this because half of your grade is the final exam, and in full honesty how well you do on the final is pretty much determined by the notes you bring with you. In my case I scored in the A-range for all projects with many being full 100's, but my fatal mistake was that I brought TA slides to the final exam. Many students brought copies of some alumni's notes that were easily found online, and after reviewing these notes personally I found that many answers on the final could directly be copied or easily derived just from these notes.

Basically, the class really comes down to the final exam. I still recommend studying and of course doing well on the projects, but if you want an A you'll probably want to bring either a well-crafted cheat sheet of your own or one you can find online to the final.

This TA-taught class is terrible. Straight up. I'm sure some of you have seen the "Bing is banned in China" memes on Reddit if you're taking this class--yeah, that post was for my section. This class is an absolute farce and doesn't even teach you what the syllabus says the labs will cover. Every single lab is confusing and doesn't even begin to care about the student--one of the labs just throws the word "frobnicate" at you like you should know what it means. It's absolutely ridiculous the lack of care this class shows the student. The prerequisites for this class simply list CS31--this is 100% a horrible idea. I took it concurrently with CS32 my winter quarter after 31, and unless you are literally a programming god who already knows the ins and outs of Unix-based environments, Python, C, and C++, there is no way to understand what is happening for the majority of the labs.

The TAs that I had the (dis)pleasure of coming across were a mixed bag, some were nice and helpful and some were just downright rude when you were trying to ask for help. There was also, of course, the incident with the TA who claimed Bing was not banned in China and straight up argued and fought with a group who was presenting about a news article they read that said Bing had been banned in China. I don't know whether or not it affected their grade, but I have a feeling it did.

The class suffers from a lack of cohesion in that every week is a completely unrelated concept compared to previous weeks. There were only ever 2 labs that were useful for further labs, and one of them required you to use a solution from a previous lab--however, the TAs didn't give you a solution for it and you didn't know your grade for the one you turned in, so you just had to work with your prior solution under the assumption that yeah, it probably works...? It took legitimately until the last week before grades were due to get 7 of the 10 lab scores back, meaning going into the final I knew only 15% of my grade (each lab is 5%).

The final was a massacre and Eggert (the first time I'd ever even seen the man) prefaced it with that they designed it to have a median of 50%. Furthermore, this quarter they decided to do a shared final with the other TAs instead of each TA having their own final, so I have no idea how that affected the curve. They didn't release the information, either.

Overall, I hated this class, and the amount of time I spent on it directly impacted by grade in CS32--a C+. My final recommendation here is to take it after CS33 (at the VERY least) and definitely DO NOT take it concurrently with other CS courses.

Workload, as stated by everyone before, is horrendous. Like I honestly don't know what was Eggert thinking(I still to this day have never seen the man because TA's do everything for 35L), so much is packed into each assignment and there is very little guidance on how to start it. Assignment 1 is an absolute pain. Assignment 2 is a maze of hieroglyphs that will take you hours to do, and there are many complaints to be said about other assignments. I did learn a lot, however, and there's the useful stuff like emacs, git, ssh, threading, but there is also the concepts that are put in there just because Eggert made them so he wants to show off(be ready for GNU Shuf), and are of zero practical use. But you will learn like 5 or 6 new things every assignment and the workload is insane for the class.

The final my quarter was also the first time it was a cumulative final for the entire class(all sections), very hard and sort of confusing, hopefully, they don't repeat it in later years, but Eggert is Eggert so you never know.

The saving grace of this class is by random chance, and I mean TA's. If you get a good TA as I did, who can articulate well and is helpful and actually cares, then you will be a bit better off because they will help you with the assignment(lab and hw) in the slides and all that, but if you get a TA who only cares about the stipend for his tuition, then you are in deep doo doo and I recommend going to other TA's office hours to get help.

God this class is awful. Graduating UCLA and the most awful experience of my life. There are way too many projects and too much material to review. It's great if you get some TAs who give most of the class great grades and is clear. If you get a ass of TA like mine, good luck. Doesn't explain and yells in class. Grades awfully and the average turns out to be 30~%. I still have nightmares.