CS 3100

Overall I think this course is definitely one of the harder required CS courses, but imo graded fairly and with reasonable expectations. This was Horton's first semester teaching it, so at the beginning the quizzes were very hard and the homeworks very long/hard, but after the first few he made them both easier/shorter and there is a fairly good retake policy at the end of the semester that allows for a pretty significant boost in grades.

Definitely make sure to have a very strong understanding of DSA before-hand, because if you start behind or forgot some key concepts it's easy to get completely lost and not be able to catch up.

#tCFF23

I honestly hated this class. Lectures were interesting, but honestly not very helpful. I think that each lecture was so surface-level, and so when it came to applying that knowledge to the homework it was difficult because they required a deep understanding of the topic. The material can be pretty abstract at times, and it can be difficult to grasp if you don't make a conscientious effort to learn outside of class.

Programming assignments were not bad at all, and were definitely the saving grace to my grade. Problem sets, however, were the bane of my existence. They were just difficult for no reason, and it seems like they should be group assignments (like how they were in prior semesters, nowadays it's only closed-book collaboration). Quizzes were fine, and it was easy to get a good grade as long as you studied a little bit in advance.

It's super important to start on the homework early so you can teach yourself the material early on, and go to the Professor's office hours to get help on it if you need. Also, office hours were genuinely so useless unless you went to the professor's. All the TAs were unhelpful, and they hardly even answered questions on Piazza. It was always so packed in OH though, so go early and go with specific questions.

If you can, try to take this class without any other hard classes in your schedule. I took this class alongside CSO2 and I hated my life sometimes, especially when the assignment due dates overlapped. I think this class was the hardest CS class I've taken so far, even harder than CSO2. Put in the work though and it's not the worst.

#tCFF23

Professor Horton is extremely kind and understanding, but the content of this class is extremely difficult and the structure of the course was not my favorite. There were 6 PAs and 5 Problem Sets due throughout the semester. The PAs were sometimes difficult but I found it really helpful to go to Horton's office hours for those. The problem sets were quite confusing, especially if you are a CS major in the college without much math/proof background knowledge. I also thought the first few quizzes were difficult, but they got easier throughout the semester, and you can get up to 20 points back on the retakes during the final exam. Overall, I wouldn't recommend taking this with another hard/time consuming class as I found it took up a lot of my time. #tCFF23

Overall, this class is pretty fair. The TA office hours aren't very helpful in my experience, but the professor office hours were very descriptive. The first programming assignment was very difficult, but overall starting the assignments early will make your life way better. Some of the information we learned wasn't that interesting in my opinion, but learning about graphs and dynamic programming was very interesting.

In order to succeed in this class, having a good problem set group and being able to look towards outside resources (Google, StackOverflow, etc.) will make a huge difference. The class is difficult, but fair. However, the quizzes are tough and they are very heavily based on lecture materials, so make sure you either pay attention in class or take the time to watch the recorded lectures.

This class is great the lectures are very useful and material is pretty interesting. Recommend studying ahead of time for the quizzes.