CS 2110

Course was very interesting, labs are short but don't wait until the last minute to start them especially since they don't take long at all. Start homework individually early on, you can do it in one day but you probably won't learn the best and will have to rely on the TA's who get pretty backed up the day and the day before homework is due. Head TA Kevin Mulliss was very condescending but the others are very helpful and are easy to talk to. You don't have to do the readings to do well but they are helpful, and you can find PDF versions online. If there are cohorts, try to form relationships early on so you can use each other as resources and have another friend in the class.

CS2110 for fall2020 ran a little differently cause of covid so we had Dennis Graham, Nada Basit, and Derrick Stone all rotate lectures per class. That being said, Nada Basit is definitely the best, she leaves zero holes and is a great lecturer. Derrick Stone is the next best, he isn't as clear as Nada Basit but he's alright, you should definitely do the textbook reading before watching his lecture. I think this was Daniel Grahams first semester teaching 2110, he was an OK explainer but probably the worst of the three, though he was not bad at all. If you took AP or IB computer science in highschool you'll probably ace this class, if you're new to coding like I was do NOT procrastinate on the homeworks; they aren't incredibly difficult but some of them can be really long and the submission page is will give you errors that you'll most likely need a TA to help you solve. The labs are basically completion grades, The test multiple choice is kind of hard but the coding portions are pretty easy, the weekly quizzes aren't too hard either.

I'm a first year, and I took this class first semester because I had AP credit for APCS and I thought this class was insanely easy. The first 3/4 of the class is just things we already learned in APCS, and the new stuff wasn't too bad. Stone isn't the greatest teacher ever. He's not as great of a lecturer as the other professors, and his slides are slightly disorganized sometimes, but he's definitely not as bad as the other reviews say. I was expecting him to be terrible based on his reviews here, but he was mediocre. I don't think it matters though because he's going to be the only one teaching from Spring 2022 onwards. He's actually pretty helpful if you ask him questions. You get one homework assignment a week, and the lab time is when you work on it with your cohort. I never spent anytime doing CS outside of the lab, so overall pretty easy class. Would recommend.

#tCFfall2021