CS 2100

Like with the other reviews, this isn't about Professor Horton specifically, since the experience this semester was pretty consistent between the three professors who taught it. I will also give Professor Horton a *lot* of leeway from the top since he was healing from an injury for the first several weeks of the semester.

That being said, this was a course I wanted to enjoy, but really didn't. For us, all programming assignment grades except for one were completely based on the autograder, which in many cases was not working or unhelpful in figuring out what was wrong. Especially for earlier autograders, error messages were quite generic and gave little insight into which component was actually causing problems. A few times, autograders were so unreliable or broken to the point where deadlines had to be pushed back, which made the course extremely difficult to plan around. Even when we were given the tester programs as part of homework packages, it was pretty difficult to follow how they tested our code and pointed out errors, so they were of limited use and potentially none at all. Because of all of this, I had a pretty unhappy time in the class. I hope the wrinkles in the course get ironed out in future semesters and it is far more organized. The course is definitely doable, it just may not be an enjoyable experience.

This course was very disorganized (the profs work as a team, so this is not Horton-specific) which can be attributed to some extenuating circumstances and the fact that this is a relatively new class. All of the professors truly meant well and are clearly genuine, but the course organization was very stressful. In multiple cases, deadlines were extended or entire assignments were scrapped at the last minute. I'm hoping they've worked out some of the issues they faced this semester because I think it would have been a more enjoyable experience if deadlines weren't constantly changing.

Some pros: lectures are recorded so you can look back at any point (and you can watch other professors' lectures), lots of TA office hours (with varying levels of busyness... definitely plan to be there for awhile if you go the day the HW is due or in some cases even the day before), no formal exams (weekly short quizzes that you have a few opportunities to retake)

You can do well in this course, but you really have to start assignments early. I would not recommend this course to someone looking to fulfill a gen-ed, only take it if you are considering a CS major/minor or if you're otherwise very interested in the content.

My semester was a little chaotic; Professor Horton wasn't able to teach until halfway through the semester due to an injury (we had several professors sub in for him until then), the whole university community faced a tragedy near the end of the semester, and it was also one of the first semesters of teaching this course in the new CS curriculum. Because of these circumstances, many assignments and Gradescope autograders were released pretty late and many timelines were adjusted. This was kind of frustrating, but I don't really foresee this being a problem if you take this in future semesters. The weekly coding homeworks range in difficulty, so you should make sure you start early because a few will require lots of office hours if you're stuck. There are also written analysis homeworks, which can be easy if you have a good cohort of peers to do them with; I highly recommend finding a good group/cohort to work with on these that will be willing to help each other understand the importance/implications of certain modules. Quizzes are not too hard; as long as you study you will do fine. Overall, if you keep yourself accountable and go to lecture, study a little for weekly quizzes, and don't procrastinate homework, an A is very doable.