CS 3100

I started wearing started wearing noise cancellation and jaywalking because this course made me wanna kms

This class is a mess from start to finish, no matter which professor you take it with. Teaching assistants are unhelpful, grading is inconsistent, and averages are rarely released, making it impossible to gauge class performance. Programming assignments (PAs) are poorly designed, with hidden test cases that force students to guess edge cases. There is no partial credit. One bad grade on these assignments, worth 25% each, can severely hurt your overall grade. The policy capping final grade scores based on quiz averages is unfair and discouraging, penalizing students even if they perform well on assignments. Quizzes and lectures lack clarity, and professors and TAs often respond rudely to questions. Grading delays are unacceptable, with problem sets taking over a month to return, despite promises of faster turnaround times. This course fails to provide a supportive/effective learning environment.

This course was disorganized from start to finish. There are two separate professors listed, but its taught as a joint class. Bloomfield is a swindling hardass that has made the course set up in such a way that you aren't supposed to succeed. Grading on quizzes is very arbitary. One small mistake can cost you 10% of the points on a quiz. Additionally, the programming assigments are designed terribly. The test cases are not revealed to you beforehand, leaving you to guess at what the edge test cases are like. Even if you write your own code to generate test cases and check with a friend (like I did), that is no guarantee that your code will pass whatever auto-grader tests that the devil incarnate Bloomfield has cooked up. On one programming assignment, a SINGLE test case was worth half the grade! Additionally, there are no extra credit opportunities (aside from the retake opportunities that will let you get back a measly 10 points back per quiz. Wow, the lord truly has graced us with his generosity).
Bloomfield's lectures are trash, he just reads from the power point and the guy is an evil version of Mr. Bean. He doesn't care about actual code quality, he just cares about your ability to pass autograder tests. This auto-grader method was created entirely to avoid having human intervention during the grading process and have a human, god forbid, actually look at code!

Not to mention, the grading for this class was unacceptably slow. It took over a month to return a problem set (a ONE WEEK turnaround time was promised). And, the grading was inconsistent with the syllabus policy outlined too! The entire problem set was graded for accuracy when the syllabus only said part of it would be graded for accuracy.

Oh, and the charity that bloomfield runs about teaching middle-school aged girls to code? Its totally disingenous. The school you go and volunteer at is an all-girls private middle school. It just happens to be the case that his daughter goes to school.

In conclusion, Aaron Bloomfield is the epitome of the adage that "those who can't do, teach" If Bloomfield is teaching this course, don't take it. Actually, this entire course is garbage, but especially when Bloomfield is teaching it. Its a really terrible course, and even though I got a fairly decent grade for this class (A-), it's persuaded me not to continuing majoring in CS at UVA. CS at UVA is just a money grab, and if you have the skills for it, you're probably better off going into electrical engineering or computer engineering or something else.

tl;dr stay on top of assignments and collaborate often

This should definitely be the hardest class you take in a given semester, but it's not too heavy to the point where you can't take this class with any of the easier CS electives. Bloomfield is an adequate professor, but the content is just a lot. Readings aren't necessary, but they can help if you need them.

If you can help it, take this class with friends. It's not a high priority like it is for CS 3140, but collaboration is encouraged and sometimes outright necessary for some of the problem sets and programming assignments. I used Java for most of the programming assignments, but I recommend using Python instead since it saves a lot of headaches. Try to finish them as soon as possible.

My main complaint with this class is that most of the grades do not come back until weeks later (as of writing there are still missing grades for assignments from over three weeks ago), but overall, you could do a lot worse for a required CS class.

#tCFF24