In general, I find the textbook to be very good. However, the Professor's slides and writings are often confusing. Sometimes, contradicting information can be presented in the same slide with very confusing wordings.

Professor Reiher is great at making a very structured course on this large topic and explaining the content well. The problem is that there is too much content. I maybe understood some things but I will leave this class not really fully appreciating the different aspects of it. I know it is an introduction class, but I would trim it down more and maybe split it into how CS31 and CS32 is split. This will greatly benefit everyone.

Reiher definitely knew what he was talking about. He is a very good professor and he had a good little charm to him. OS isn't an easy class to teach so I can't say anything negative about how dense his lectures were. He went through a lot of slides and it was all just talk, but realistically there isn't really any much else he could do. The class being at 8AM was my 2nd biggest hurdle; my biggest hurdle was the sheer amount of reading that I had to do for this class. It's not a bad class though, it's pretty fair.

Lectures are clear. Many examples are provided for each concept.
Professor is helpful and answers question very comprehensively.

There is a lot of reading. The textbook is very good and humorous at times.
Exam wording is confusing sometimes.
Projects are disappointingly easy.

Overall the other reviews put it pretty well. There’s a bit of reading for every lecture that explains things really well and you should definitely read it. Be careful with the discussion though because some TAs make a big difference. I had Victor Zhang but I would not reccomend. Instead, if Salekh is TAing definitely go to his section instead he’s the goat. His section was always packed.

Great class for CS 111. I really liked how the lectures for this class were all recorded, and the exams were conducted entirely remotely. This meant that I never had to physically attend class (which would be quite a pain since lectures occur at 8 am).

This course is tough, don't get me wrong. As the previous reviewers have mentioned, 100 pages of dense OS textbook reading a week. On top of that, you also have the lectures to rewatch and 5 projects that involve programming in C. I easily spent at least 10 hours a week on this class alone.

Professor Reiher is a very clear lecturer and always answers students' questions in a timely manner either on the Zoom chat or on Piazza. In addition, the labs this quarter were incredibly straightforward, as the TA's used Professor Eyolfson's labs. None of the labs were particularly difficult, and most of them took no more than 6-7 hours. I can definitely see how just a few years ago, one taking Reiher's CS 111 could easily spend over 20-25 hours a week on this course alone.

Exams were all multiple choice and remote (and timed, where you choose a 2 hour time period to take the test from a 24 hour window). That being said, you still need to know your stuff to do well on the tests. Many of the test questions were in the form of "Select all that apply," so it's essential to do the readings, take good notes on them, and study for the tests. I can see how one could get away with skipping some of the readings and then frantically Ctrl-F their way through the readings on the day of the exam looking for answers. But to save yourself stress, it's best to do the readings and watch the lectures ahead of time as recommended by Professor Reiher himself.

I somehow ended up just shy of a 93 percent in the class (like 0.1 percent away), yet still ended up with an A. Really thankful that Professor Reiher decided to bump my grade up!

Like the other reviewer said, the TAs this quarter used Eyolfsen's labs which were pretty straightforward. The lectures were at 8am but he recorded all of them so it was less of a pain. The exams were heavily based on the concepts and the assigned reading that were assigned each lecture (sometimes almost 100 pages per lecture!). However, since the exams were online and open-book, I didn't end up doing the reading and did fine on the exams.

The TA's in my quarter used the famed Eyolfson labs, so the majority of the class should be pretty straightforward. Midterm and final were 3 hour time limit that could be taken in a 24 hour window, online multiple choice, open book, open notes.

I really enjoyed the class, since it goes a lot into what I was curious about how computers worked. It follows the open source OSTEP textbook, which goes through virtualization (how to make many processes think they have control over the computer), concurrency, and persistence. Reiher also goes a bit into distributed systems and security towards the end of the quarter. The last couple weeks felt like an introduction for what upper div software CS would be like, which I liked

OSTEP Textbook is *phenomenal*. I used it to study for job interviews way after the course was over (and did get an offer from one of those interviews lol).
Reiher is a great lecturer, but even more important, his slides are great for studying and referencing during lecture. Projects are pretty time-consuming, comparable to most other project-based CS classes, but TAs are incredibly helpful during discussions, showing us how to set up the skeleton, what proper functioning looks like, etc.
Would take again with Reiher 10/10

Reiher is a no-nonsense professor. He gives his lectures in a very straightforward and matter-of-fact style, no jokes or humor or anything unrelated to class content. So I wouldn't exactly call him an engaging lecturer, but he is very articulate and clear, while also going through material relatively fast. His lecture slides are detailed and contain most of the information you need.

The workload in this class is tough, I think it deserves its reputation for the most part. Every week there is a project, most of them take 10-20 hours. In addition, expect to sink another 5-10 hours per week into doing readings and taking notes on them. The key to success in this class is taking meticulous notes on everything.

The difficulty of this class stems from the workload and breadth of material, not the conceptual aspects. There is comparatively little critical thinking when it comes to the tests. Doing well on those mostly comes down to how well you retain the readings or lectures (or how good the notes you took are). Overall, probably the best you can expect for 111, as other reviews have said.