CS 2150

I don't think I could really judge a course that has been developed and improved for years. All my thoughts are in the rating. For the professor, I believe Mr.Bloomfield may be the BEST CS PROFESSOR at UVa. The course structure was clear, and all the resources are available at any time. I have to admit the workload is big, but at least it's reasonable. The midterms and final are also fair. He did not test things that have not been covered in class.

I stopped watching Bloomfield's lectures a week in and just watched Floryan's for the rest of the semester but I disliked the interactions I had with Bloomfield. he wasn't very helpful when I needed a loaner computer and in general seemed like he genuinely enjoyed making us suffer. I think this course would've been more bearable emotionally if I knew my professor actually cared about the wellbeing and success of their students. I'd recommend taking this course with Floryan - even though the content is the same, Floryan is a lot more compassionate and helpful when it comes to stuff like that. Onto the class - obviously it's a ton of work. I think I spent around 15 hours a week on this course, though sometimes I'd spend an entire day or two alone on the labs (the IBCM labs were the worst). I failed all of the exams but still ended up passing! Just focus on doing well on the labs (OH queue is TERRIBLE so take advantage of the engineering tutoring site- anyone can use it not just e-school students) and you should be fine.

Honestly, the difficulty is extremely overhyped. I came into UVA not knowing how to code and by just going through 1110 and 2110 I was able to do decently well in this class. Sure, there is a lot of content to digest, sure some labs are frustrating but it's not a life ruining class like often portrayed. The exams are basically CS/C++ trivia. If you study for long enough you will do fine. It is a weed-out class, but getting an A is absolutely doable. I never went to OH but all the TA's I interacted with seemed nice and knowledgeable. Bloomfield is an amazing professor. His "lack" of kindness stems from the fact that he has ~350 students to take care of. This has been my favorite class @ UVA so far.

I had Bloomfield for this course (who also happened to be my advisor which worked out nice). In terms of his personality, he's a fairly nice dude, little bit of a dry sense of humor which I enjoyed. He showed a xkcd comic that related to the lecture before class every day, which usually got a few laughs from the class.

This class isn't for the faint of heart. That being said, it's not that bad either. A lot of people refer to this class as a "weed out" class, which is probably true, however it's not that hard to get a good grade in this class either. Grade consists of 45% labs, 30% Midterms (two exams, probably take about an hour each), and 25% final (also an hour-hour/half). Labs are autograded on GradeScope, and while there are some hidden test cases that get run after the lab due date, they usually don't test that much more than what's specified. There's a prelab, inlab, and postlab due each week for 11 Labs, so about 33 assignments total. I only got < 100% on 3/33, and one was just for being late. I'm not some prodigy either, but if you can use resources well (like piazza and office hours) good grades are definitely attainable.

Exam averages were around ~65% ish, however everyone I talked to always got better than a 70%. They publish every exam from the last 15 years of the course, so you know exactly what you're going to be tested on.

Don't get me wrong, this class is hard. One day I started coding at 10AM and finally finished the prelab at 10PM, barring a two hour break for dinner. Majority of the class is in C++, which is a lot more robust than Java and absolutely nothing like Python. You work in Machine Code and x86 for a bit, but only for about 3-4 weeks total.

Overall, the course is not as hard as some people probably make it out to be. Sure, it takes a lot of work, but paying attention in class, going to office hours, and using piazza make an A easily attainable if you're willing to put in 10-15 hours per week #tCFspring2022

Kinda sad this class is going away. It was hard but Bloomfield is an amazing lecturer and I learned an insane amount of computer science thanks to this class.