CS 2130

This course was a very challenging, but very rewarding, exploration of computer architecture and low-level topics. The first third of the course, which is spent on circuits and boolean algebra and works up to 8-bit machine code, is definitely the hardest--to echo the other reviews, the Bit Fiddling homework (HW1) was probably the hardest assignment I've ever had in my life. The course does get a lot better after that, though. The second third of the course gets more into machine code and x86-64 assembly, and going in I never thought I'd leap at the chance to learn assembly, but you do after doing machine code for so long. The last third is all about C from top to bottom, from primitive types to arrays, pointers, and dynamic memory.

The hardest homework was definitely Homework 1, and I also struggled with Homework 9 significantly. Labs often had an unpredictable difficulty, and many of the later ones required going to office hours to figure out. Professor Hott was exceedingly kind and very helpful in office hours (in-person and online). Though he experienced a series of personal tragedies this semester, I still found his handling of the course to be well-organized and even. He clearly enjoys the course material and teaching it, and is invested in making the course better in the future--he offered extra credit for completing the course evaluation and for giving a brief suggestion to improve the course on the final exam.

Above all, I found that this course works together with DSA1 to help you figure out whether you enjoy high-level programming (OOP, program analysis) or low-level programming (assembly/C with great control but great responsibility) more. This course is definitely more difficult than DSA1, but I enjoyed this class way more, and I know I want to work in the parts of CS that use this material more. Hopefully, bumps in the road can be smoothed out for you in future semesters, and the course can be a better experience.

Tips: use a Linux or Unix-based development environment for this class. For Mac users, this can be your built-in terminal, and for Windows users, you can do this with Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL) without having to run a virtual machine. Using a Linux or Linux-based environment is far easier than trying to use something like Windows PowerShell, and is really what the course is about. When things go wrong, it's way faster to troubleshoot in Linux or related environments than in PowerShell. Also, definitely go to office hours, especially for Homework 1 and the later labs. This course is tough, but it is worth it. #tCFfall22

Robbie Hott is a really great individual, and very flexible and understanding. He also persevered through this semester and helped students through personal circumstances. He is a great professor and I have no complaints for him specifically.

That said, I have my complaints about the curriculum itself. To keep it short, labs consist of you getting vague instructions on how to get started, so you have to wait for a TA to help you out and half the time you may be able to complete a lab if you are an average CS student.

Homeworks are independent, and extremely difficult. It is misleading when they say the course gets easier over time. In my own experience, this is not true because future material builds off previous material, so it is important to understand as you go through the year. In my honest opinion, homeworks should be group-based and cited, and exams should be graded less harshly to make the class less difficult.

Also, TAs seem to be understaffed in this course specifically. Plan ahead when getting office hours or homework help.

Of course, if you are really struggling Robbie will do his best to help you out if you work with him. Good luck

Prof Hott is honestly the nicest, caring, really awesome and great professors ever. I'm super glad I took this course with him this semester. This course is hard; the concepts can be pretty difficult to grasp if maybe you're not familiar with them/just not good at circuits and what not like me. But with practice, it gets a lot easier. The grading is like 10% labs, 40% exams, 10% quizzes, 40% hws. Lab is great, you learn a lot there and practice a lot there. Exams are kind of just standard CS exams. Not that terrible but not that great. Prof Hott even gave double extra credit at the end of the semester. Our average was lower than previous years (around 74 or something vs 80s) The quizzes are online each week and are ok. They're focused on things we learned in lecture the previous week and the lowest one gets dropped which is good. Hw is not bad at all especially compared to DSA 2, but the last few hws get significantly harder. Overall, really liked this course with Prof. Hott and learned a lot

Summary: I really liked Professor Hott as a person as well as the grading structure and format of the course, but did not like the material itself. It would be wise to set aside a decent amount of your week and weekend to succeed in this course.

Instructor: Professor Hott is definitely one of the nicest/ kindest CS professors out there (in my opinion). He always responded to my emails promptly and was a very understanding person throughout the semester (especially when he had is own unfortunate set of circumstances). He structures his office hours around the times that his students are most available, which is really nice and helpful.

Lectures: The lectures mostly covered what was needed to complete homework assignments, but they unfortunately didn't really feel that comprehensive (especially at the beginning of the course with gates and binary... The lectures felt like being taught 1 + 1 = 2 while the bit fiddling homework felt like being asked to solve a double integral with the divergence theorem). There was a bit too much time spent on reviewing quiz questions (I think it would've been a bit better to have a dedicated 15 minute video reviewing the Quiz questions so that there would be more time in lecture), and Prof. Hott almost always ran out of time at the end. For the most part, however, the lectures were sufficient enough to do what needed to be done outside of class. I spent most of my homework and lab time primarily just grinding out the solutions and figuring out what was wrong with my syntax or patching up logical holes. I didn't spend a lot of time on the readings or in Office Hours to complete the homework, but there were definitely times where they were helpful.

Course Material: This class will definitely help you figure out whether you like low-level programming or not, unfortunately this course has fostered within me a deep, burning hatred for the C programming language. I do not wish for this occur to anyone, but I'd like to mention that the possibility of absolutely despising what is being taught to you isn't zero. It definitely is possible to succeed in this course even if your only motivation is to maintain a passing grade and meet deadlines. I'd suspect that actually finding the course fun (whether you are deluding yourself into or actually finding it enjoyable) would make CS 2130 significantly more bearable, however.

Time Breakdown:
No Exam Week: ~2-4 hours to complete homework, 0-2 hours to finish lab outside of lab time.
Weekend Quizzes: ~1-2 hours to complete the quizzes
Exam Week: ~3-5 hours to fully study the material (skimming readings, old exams for practice), ~2-4 hours to finish homework.
Your mileage may vary, but this is roughly how much time I spent on average per week on different assignments for this class. Definitely be ready to allocate more time to this course on the two exam weeks; it might just save your grade!

Grading Structure: 40% Homework, 10% Lab, 40% Exam, 10% Quizzes. I found the grading percentages for this class to be incredibly forgiving, as there is more than enough time to complete homeworks and get 100's on them, the labs can be completed with a relatively minimal amount of time spent outside of the designated class time for a full checkoff, and the quizzes are simple enough to mostly get good grades on (especially with a quiz grade dropped, you can take the L on one of them and still have an excellent quiz average). If you do well on the homework, labs, and quizzes then you won't have to worry too much about excelling on the tests to pass (and the bar for getting an A is still well within reach). If you want an A in the class, then you'll definitely have to do well on everything. But if you are satisfied with a B or C, then you won't really need to worry even if you bomb an exam or two.

Possible Sources of Bias: I'd like to be as transparent and unbiased as possible when reviewing a class, but there's always the chance that I am allowing my biases to affect my review of the course. Here's a list of things that might have affected my opinion for this class: I did not like the course material, I didn't properly read through all of the readings, some of the homeworks were very frustrating for no apparent reason (I wasted 10 hours of my time submitting my answer with a 'valid' form of output according to the homework page was wrong, I had to change to the other, actually valid form of output for my code to be considered right), and I received an A in the course. I can't think of anything else that could potentially affect my thoughts on this class.

#tCFfall22

Robbie is a very kind person and a decent lecturer, but he really expects a lot out of his students. I'd say he's fair over anything, but be prepared to rip your hair out at some of these assignments. And that final was ridiculous.

Robbie is not a great person. He literally told me that he makes the deadline 11pm instead of 11:59pm because he is too fucking lazy to select 11:59pm on gradescope. For this reason, he WOULD not accept a fucking late assignment.

This man does nothing but talk about his dead parents all day. He finds the dumbest things interesting and bases the whole fucking class around them.

If you can take it with literally anyone else, I would recommend it. The course content is manageable if you are really locked in and don't fall behind. Also, there is no curve, the averages on all of the tests were around a 60-70% and are 50% of your grade. It is very possible to do well in this class, but I would recommend taking it thinking it will be your hardest class and maybe not take any other crazy ones alongside it. Always make sure to do every single practice test to study for the midterms and final, the format is exactly the same but obviously the questions are different, but I think if you can get through the practice test with no help you will be fine.

I really enjoyed this course. It teaches how computers work from the ground up, starting with electricity and transistors, moving through logic gates and components like multiplexers and adders, then into a simple ISA, x86-64 assembly, and finally C. The progression is very intentional and makes the material feel cohesive rather than fragmented.

Some of the work is challenging, but it never feels repetitive or like busywork. Homework and labs directly reinforce the concepts and are more than sufficient preparation for exams. In fact, the course gets noticeably easier as it goes on, especially if you already know how to code. Early homeworks were by far the hardest and were often deeply conceptual, while later assignments were much more manageable and were more traditional coding assignments.

The course has two midterms and a final, with past years’ exams posted on the course website. This makes it easy to gauge your preparedness and provides plenty of high-quality study material. With homework, labs, and past exams combined, I never felt unprepared and performed very well on the exams.

Professor Hott is outstanding and is easily the best professor I’ve had in college so far. He’s very engaging and incredibly good at explaining difficult concepts clearly, which makes a huge difference in a class like this.

That said, if you have little interest in how computers actually work, this course could feel tedious and overly difficult. I wouldn’t recommend taking it unless you need it or are genuinely interested in the topic, as it requires more consistent attention than many other CS courses.

Overall, this was a very rewarding class. While the material is complex, it isn’t unfair, and I think it’s a reasonably easy A if you put in the effort to understand things conceptually.