CS 2150

CS 2150 is definitely a CS weed out class, but teaches you a lot of great skill. The CS lab is essentially just a closed-off office hours session, but the assignment isn't due until midnight. The OH queue (starting from like Lab 4) will be 1-1.5 hour long. Make sure you go to OH, even if you think you don't need it. Also utilize Engineering tutoring!

TLDR; you get out what you put in, and you put in more if you're interested in the class content. The class was very time consuming (I took 13 credits the semester I took 2150 and I still felt overwhelmed- I would recommend anyone taking a light course load with 2150 as well). The labs were difficult, but not unmanageable if you started early and sought help early. You feel like a real computer science major after this class!

I don't know what's going on with the hours/week stat on this page, but I spent about 8-10 hours per week on this class. It's difficult, but it's totally manageable if you start on the labs early. My recommendation is to go into this course expecting a huge workload, but you'll probably find that it's not quite as difficult as you originally thought. Be wary for labs 2, 5, 6, and 11, which I found to be the most difficult. Bloomfield is a great professor, and he explains everything very well. I didn't find myself using OH, but other students have said that you should attend OH early in the week so you don't need to wait. Don't forget to submit your assignments on time. I lost a bit of credit because I forgot to submit my labs on time.

Some labs take frustrating amount of time to debug or even start coding. Lab 2, 5, and 6 are the hardest, so it's better to start early. Test question mainly come from lectures, and it's good to take detailed notes during class.

First of all, DO NOT GET FOOLED BY Mark Floryan or other professor's slightly higher ratings on this website. Bloomfield is the professor who made this course, and he taught more students than other professors. You can see that Bloomfield has over 100 reviews where others are like 10s or 20s. Because of this, Bloomfield receives more hate than other professors. So keep this in mind when you select your professor.

Bloomfield is a great professor. He is good at lecturing and passing every bits of information to the class. CS 2150 itself is a difficulty course regardless of who you take it with, but if you want a professor who is good at teaching and has good knowledge of what's going on, then Bloomfield is the person to go. Bloomfield may seem like a rather not-easy-going person, but I think he just does not express himself that often. Definitely do not feel discourage with talking to him.

Both labs and exams are annoying and difficult. For exams, it weight rather heavily on conceptual stuff taught during lecture and labs, so making sure you taking notes in lecture and paying attention in lecture is crucial.

Personally I did not like the class being superficial. I know it is hard to go in-depth when there are a lot of materials to cover, but compared to similar-level cs courses that teach data structure and basic algorithms at other universities, such as Princeton, Berkeley, and Michigan, etc.., our course seems to be significantly easier, content-wise. I have not yet taken CS 4102, but if 4102 does not teach materials covered in 2150 (like variations of trees, sorting algorithms, backtracking, path-finding algorithms, and A LOT MORE) in much deeper level, i think in that case there is a significant flaw in our CS curriculum. Labs take a lot of time so make sure to get started on them early.

Out of all the CS classes I've taken so far, Professor Bloomfield has to be one of the best lecturers I've had. He is very knowledgeable about the material and isn't afraid to tell a student that he can't answer their question if he isn't 100% sure. In terms of workload, I spent about 9-12 hours per week on the material with Labs 2, 5, and 6 taking almost 12 hours, so be sure to start early. There are office hours everyday except Tuesday (lab day), Friday, and Saturday. Distributing the work throughout the week and leaving ample time to go to office hours for help will make this class more than manageable. Exams are difficult, but if you review the lecture slides and take the past exams you should be okay. You will learn a lot in this class and I highly recommend taking it with Bloomfield.

Lots of work, but don't be scared. Instructors and TAs are very helpful--USE THEM. I wish I had gone to office hours earlier in the semester, would've saved me a lot of time.

Bloomfield is a solid lecturer and the class wasn't too bad. Labs are pretty manageable with labs 5, 6, and 10 being particularly challenging. My biggest issue was with the exam grading. Idk if it was just the TA I had but he/she had a huge power trip when grading my first exam. This mf kept trying to argue that insert and delete in a linked list aren't constant time operations in my regrade request. That plus a bunch of other poorly graded questions brought my first exam grade from what should've been high 80s low 90s down to a 73. Fortunately, the online final exam was multiple choice and computational questions, so there was no room for any subjective grading. Other than my TA experience, I enjoyed the labs and thought they were pretty fun challenges.

I probably learned more from this class than almost any other class I've taken so far. It really forces you to learn the material, which is actually useful in the real world, as many of these data structures have shown up on interviews I have done for jobs. Bloomfield is a good lecturer and includes relevant material in lectures.

I will say, there were a couple points in this class which I did not like. For one, with some of the labs, like IBCM and x86, I felt like there was a specific method or cheat code that if you did not learn from TAs, it would be very hard to logically get to. Especially with IBCM, I found those labs much more difficult because I missed the TA spots and it was hard to find the solution logically without getting pointed in the right direction. The other labs did feel intuitive and possible after going through the lectures though.

Overall, most of the labs did not take an insane amount of time, probably 7-9 hours for the hard ones and less than 2 for the easier ones. Time management is super important for this class though, and if I could redo it I would start the labs early and get help from TAs when stuck early, because the TA slots go quickly in the time right before the labs. Definitely a good class that makes you a far better coder and computer scientist.