Dr. Venugopal is a great professor, BruinWalk has given her such a terrible reputation. She tries her best to make the lectures are clear and concise as possible. The class has nearly no homework and the tests are extremely fair. Her grading distribution is absolutely amazing, and I would highly suggest you take this course with her.

I believe someone below commented, take the Life Science 30 series, but don't take it with Venugopal. I agree. The math itself seems like it should be easy and straightforward, but somehow it ends up being very convoluted with her. She is a nice lady but she can't really teach. My TA was a far better teacher than her. My TA was Long Nguyen, if he's available again I would recommend him, he was very helpful. The labs are quite confusing and stressful, the TA had to run around and explain everything to everyone the entire lab section. But the TA will help you finish the lab if you go to office hours and you're not tested on the labs, so just make sure you get them done even if you don't understand them.

She lectures straight out of the book, so if you fall asleep during lectures, it is fine. However, you still need to attend lectures because of clickers for participation. Her labs are also mandatory, and the TA will take attendance. She's often not clear on concepts and can't really explain. Her lectures always get cut off because she explains things very slowly.
The LS 30 series is easy. You won't spend money on textbooks because they provide you their own written textbook for free. The labs are weird, but hopefully you have a good TA or a coding genius friend.
Her exams are pretty similar to her past exams she provides you. So do that, and you should be fine. Her office hours are useless though. Don't bother.

Venogupal is a horrible teacher. She can't explain materials clearly and sometime I had a hard time understanding her English. The entire lecture was unorganized and messy. Thank god we had excellent TAs they were very helpful both in discussions and in office hours. I mostly went to Conley or Garfinkel's lectures they were much better than Venogupal. If you take LS30A do not take it with her take Conley or Garfinkel.

Dr.Venogupal cannot explain clearly and is very disorganized. I learned more in Conley's review session for the Final Exam compared to the whole quarter. The concepts are not difficult though. The class is okay, but do not take it with her.

Professor Venugopal is a very nice person but she is unclear in her lectures. She is also difficult to hear at times. The labs that are due every week are difficult but the TAs and UAs are very helpful and have plenty of office hours. The math doesn't seem like it should be hard, but she does a poor job explaining it. I feel like the tests would have been easy if I was given a proper explanation.

She genuinely wants to help her students, but her lecture skills could use a bit of work. The labs for this class are useful because they provide an introduction to systems-oriented programming, but some are annoying to do.

Very confusing and contradicted herself frequently

If you're considering Venugopal for LS 30A I highly recommend her. I wish someone had told me these things when I enrolled in the class: GO TO OFFICE HOURS. She really clarifies a lot that she misses during lecture and she tells you whats covered on the weekly quizzes/tests during these sessions. They're held right after the class so its convenient to go at least once a week. The tests are really fair. Participation is not a huge part of your grade honestly and there is no homework. Labs are hard but collaboration is encouraged-so make use of that. Lab test is cheese. Easy A if you put in some effort. EC was offered my quarter.

Being honest, Professor V is not that good of a teacher (only point of lecture is clickers). She spends a lot of lectures reviewing material from the previous lecture and making corny jokes. The textbook is your best bet in actually learning anything and also most of the concepts are pretty easy to understand. Not only that, but the questions that show up on the exam are also easy to solve because they don't ask you about the complex parts of a concept. The TAs for this class are all great so they will also be a good resource. Venugopal posts many practice tests online and gives you lots of resources to succeed. Labs are hard-ish but the TAs and UAs are so helpful! Compared to the other profs, Venugopal's class is technically easier because there's virtually no homework other than labs and she makes her exams a little easier than the other professors. Just read the textbook to learn material and also this quarter at least, she gave a lot of extra credit to help our grades.