CS 2100

Briana Morrison herself is great. She's enjoyable to speak to and tries to help students. Also offers a lot of extra credit, which you should always do. With that being said, she spends over half the lecture answering student questions, and the other half reading off a powerpoint slideshow that doesn't do a great job explaining. This class throws you into Java, and if you have no previous Java experience, you're screwed. The TAs are barely any help, they think giving you any type of help is equivalent to flat out giving you answers. If you ask them for help, they'll just ask you questions to try and get you to think with no direction and leave you even more confused. There's also too many assignments a week to handle and if you miss more than 1 quiz, hw assignment, and lab due to extenuating circumstances, good luck to your grade!

This class is essentially a free A if you stay on top of your homework early to earn the extra credit. During my semester, there was more than 6% of extra credit available, making an A very attainable. Toward the end of the class, the workload ramps up quickly, so don’t put things on the back burner for too long. If you manage your time well throughout the year, you won’t even need to take a final, which can free up more time for your other courses.

Professor Morrison is great—very enthusiastic about DSA—so pay attention in lectures and use online resources to refresh your memory. All in all, if you approach the coursework strategically, this class should be a relatively stress-free path to an A.

Morrison is great! Very friendly and explains the material intuitively. I also feel like the multiple choice quizzes are more straightforward than people make them seem to be: just make sure you review the slides not gone over in class and you'll be fine. Important subject matter and well-taught. If you haven't taken APCSA or don't have Java experience I'd recommend doing CodingBat or some other programming practice at the beginning of the semester.

It wasn't too bad. i liked morrison, sometimes she explained things way too fast but to be fair the curriculums pretty packed. for the most part she seemed patient and she always kept the mood light. i have a couple of friends who skipped datar lectures and just watched morrison recordings bc they were easier to understand. dont expect to understand everything in lecture --- pay attention and you'll def get a lot of it (which will save ur time), but still expect to do some learning on ur own outside of class. it might seem like u get extra credit opportunities, but don't miss ANY of them if u care about getting an A (be ready to lose points on mcq quizzes). the class kinda biased towards people who have been coding for a while, so if ur fresh out of 111x, i def recommend familiarizing urself with java a little bit before diving in. on the other hand, if you've done APCSA + some other coding practice, the writing quizzes and hws will be easy.

I really enjoyed this class! We spent 1/3 of the semester reviewing Java and 2/3 of the semester going over data structures and algorithms (trees, searches, LL, etc.). Professor Morrison gave up to 3 bonus points if you turned in homework assignments early, so I would definitely recommend taking advantage of that. Also, make sure to take advantage of TA and professor OH!

The course is definitely not as much of a mess as the older reviews suggest. Honestly, my biggest gripe with the course would be the lectures — Prof. Morrison's slide decks are way too big (they appeared to be multiple slide decks merged together) and she moves way too fast during class (don't expect to handwrite notes and keep up). Still, going to the lectures was more beneficial than skipping (especially since she does coding demos as well), especially since the class as a whole moves very quickly throughout the material.

The grading breakdown is, in my opinion, very fair:
Syllabus Quiz: 1%
Programming HW (you get a few bonus points for turning it in 2 days early): 36%
Labs: 13%
Quiz A (an at-home, timed programming assignment with resources): 12.5%
Quiz B (in lab, multiple choice, no resources): 37.5%

The hardest of these are the quiz Bs: they definitely require you to study the material well, and some questions are just flat-out ridiculous. There is no final; instead, you can retake 4 quizzes (e.g. 2 quiz Bs and 2 quiz As).

No comment on office hours (I never went to them), but Piazza is a helpful resource I used a lot.

My biggest tips for the course are to finish the homework early to get all of those bonus points (although you can get a late extension if your program is partially working, only use these as a last resort) especially if the quiz that week is going to test on the homework's topic. Also, come into the class with at least a basic amount of Java knowledge. But overall, this course is definitely manageable if you dedicate the right amount of time to it.

This course isn't recommended unless absolutely necessary due to its lackluster execution. Despite the interesting and useful content, the lectures were vague and hard to interpret. The professor's use of numerous examples and analogies made in-person lectures challenging to understand. Skipping lectures and watching them at my own pace proved more productive.

Assignments, while not terrible, required self-learning from slides and online resources. Homeworks offered an easy 100%, with extra credit for early submission. Labs, though not a great experience with dismissive teaching assistants, were a free 100% if completed promptly. Achieving perfect scores on assignments and labs is crucial, as quizzes, especially Part B, are challenging and demand knowledge of obscure details, resulting in average scores around 60%.

I took the class with absolutely no Java experience and it was an absolute nightmare for the first half of the semester. The class is extremely difficult initially if the only programming experience you have is CS 1110 or the equivalents, and I recommend studying with other students. It is possible to do well in the class even if you suck at the beginning of the semester, it just takes a lot of time and hard work. Morrison is an alright teacher, but she does not really teach the Java, and the tests have material that you will never have gone over in class or find in any of the lectures. It is a very interesting class, but definitely a butt kicker.

Great content that is foundational for all your future endeavors in computer science. To be honest, I had a background in Java so the class was somewhat a review, and so I literally skipped all the lectures but 2. However, I did watch the videos and read the slides for each quiz. Also, someone who does not have experience in Java may struggle to adapt, especially if they are coming straight from the Python class.
I did pretty well on the quizzes, but from my experience sometimes it can be luck because the questions are random for each student. Sometimes, the quiz would be pretty straightforward, but other times, I would have multiple tricky questions where I was stuck between two answers.
But outside of the quizzes, there's so much extra credit, and you should do it. It gives you so much leeway to bomb a few quizzes and still get an A. Also, you get two tries for each quiz. Plus, I think I heard that they added extra credit for doing some notes worksheet, but honestly that's overkill.

Experience with the class depends A LOT on how much prior knowledge you have of 1) Java and 2) data structures.

While the profs cover Java in the first month, the class still moves REALLY quickly through all the Java concepts. Next year, they're planning on additional Java-teaching courses, so hopefully they can bridge that gap.

Structure of the class is fair. There's 1 lab and 1 HW due per week, and a quiz every 2-3 weeks. The quiz component consists of a multi-choice test and a coding test. The final is just retaking the quizzes, so the quizzes themselves are relatively 'low stakes.'

I think Prof Morrison does her best with the content. I think learning code via lectures isn't very helpful (regardless of the prof), so I don't know if another prof could've done better with the material. Then again, I stopped attending lecture and just read the slides and did fine. #tCFS24