DS 2001

professor tashman is super nice and willing to answer questions about anything! he seemed like he really cared about students and would try to get us to chat in the beginning of class. the class being a mix of CS majors who knew everything and CLAS people who knew very little made it a little uncomfortable to ask questions or ask to slow down and just an overall weird vibe but that seems like more of a program issue. i'm not a CS major so i found the beginning of the class to be pretty fast, but after a few weeks i got the hang of it. all of the instruction was interactive, which is a super useful way to learn to code! i didn't always feel like i was good at it, but always felt like i was learning something and making progress.

the grade was from weekly quizzes, lab assignments, and a final group project. the labs were challenging at times, but not impossible if you spent a lot of time on it. i thought the TA grading was decent and provided a lot of feedback, but seemed kind of picky.

This class started out super fast and I felt like I would never get caught up since I didn't have any coding experience. However, by the end of the course I finally felt like I was starting to understand what was being taught and could keep up with the class. The workload it pretty light, just weekly labs and quizzes. Some of the labs were pretty hard and didn't always reflect what we had learned in class, but you are able to work together and can email the TA or professor for help if you have questions after office hours for the week. There is no midterm and no final. There is a final project, but the grading on it was pretty easy and you get to pick your own topic which makes it more interesting. Overall, the initial overwhelming nature of the class does get better and I learned a lot. Prof. Tashman is super approachable and will help wherever he can.

Honestly this class was taught really fast. Definitely a lot of CS majors in the class so I feel like it was more directed at them so I would struggle in a few units. No midterms or exams, just weekly labs you have class time for and easy weekly quizzes outside of class. Also there’s a group project at the very end. Adam is super nice and approachable however the TA! She is such a harsh grader (she graded the labs) and her office hours are at the worst point of the week. Anyways she’s just kinda useless. So try to get everything done in class and you should be good! I still got an A