CS 3102

Brunelle is an amazing professor who really enjoys interacting with his students. I think the material in this class started out a bit slow, but it really picked up. The second half of the course that covered Turing Machines and P vs. NP was quite fascinating, and I think this class really helped introduce me to what upper-level CS is really like (CS is not just about how to write code). Workload wasn't terrible, it just involves a lot of proof writing, which is an useful but sometimes tedious skill.

The average hours per week stat on this page is broken, and I spent about 6-8 hours per week on this course. The course material was quite interesting for me, but I think I'm in the minority. The exercises are definitely the most difficult aspect of the class, and I found myself going to office hours quite frequently. My best advice is to attend lectures and start on the exercises early. You don't need to immediately work on them actively, but as soon as they are released, READ the exercises. The more time you are able to think about the problems, the better. If you can get through the exercises, then the quizzes and exams will not be terribly difficult for you. Brunelle is a great professor, and he was very accommodating for students, especially in light of the COVID pandemic.

Professor Brunelle is a great teacher that genuinely cares about his students. I took this class during the quarantine and he was by far the most accommodating out of all my teachers. The material can be dry at times and it was pretty overwhelming for me at first, but Professor Brunelle's approach allows for constant growth in your skill and if constant effort is put in, the class is very doable. This class is required for CS majors, but if you have an option for a teacher, I definitely recommend taking it with Brunelle.

This was a great course! If you're more into the product-driven software dev side of CS, it may not be for you, but it covers a lot of interesting topics and Brunelle does a great job teaching it. He was super helpful in adapting to the online conditions and was really understanding of individual circumstances throughout the semester. The homework is difficult so office hours are essential. Each week has some written proofs and programming assignments, as well as weekly quizzes, but they're manageable since you can work with others.

I had the honor of taking this class along with 3 other upper level CS classes and during COVID hybrid phenomenon, so it was honestly a little more stressful than usual. I'd say those who took Tychonievich's version of discrete had a slight easier transition period in comparison to those who took the ~other~ version with lean (?). It evens out pretty quick though. There are usually two components to the exercises - a programming portion and a written portion. The programming portion could be done in Java or Python and can be a little confusing if you don't know what you're trying to do. Generally speaking, I didn't have too much trouble with it once I figured out what the instructions were trying to convey. On the other hand, the written portion can be a lot more frustrating. For the most part, the slides give you an idea of what you're supposed to write about. There's diagrams and whatnot about how to get from one idea to another, but constructing a formal proof can be difficult. TAs can be your best friend, but they also sometimes don't really know what's going on. There were a few times where I asked a specific question and a TA gave a really vague non-answer, but they'll usually hint at the right answer if they know. If you can, I'd go to multiple TAs to double-check, post on Piazza, or ask Brunelle. Even if you feel like you don't know what you're doing - don't worry, no one else does either. You'll probably still end up with an A on the exam. Our final (and second exam I think) were both oral and optional. Grading is pretty quick at the beginning, then slows down significantly. I was pretty confident with my grade given the consistency and within the last few days of the course it dropped down half a letter. It's a little frustrating to not know what you don't know, but in all honesty, I also started slacking once we went online so maybe it's just me.

Took this with Nathan Brunelle and David Evans during Fall 2020. The content can get really abstract and difficult, but TAs were available almost around the clock to help out with problem sets. Lectures were all asynchronous. This course was made a lot easier by the COVID cohort system—you never had to work on a problem set alone, and rather than being graded for correctness, you were only responsible for explaining the logic of a solution to a TA.

There are significant textbook readings, but I managed to get away without doing them most of the time.

That said, be prepared to watch your lectures, and occasionally do your reading. During assessed cohort meetings, you may be called on to explain any question—so make sure you understand them all, at least at a high level.

Professor Brunelle is truly awesome as a teacher and as a person. He made fun video intros for each week's content to lessen the pain of the content itself. He actually got a UVA teaching award this semester, and I can see why. Great guy. The content of this class is tricky, and often took a lot of group discussion and office hour visits to reach a conclusion, but I see how it's good to know this material for future classes. Your grade in this class is based completely on weekly assessed meetings and reports. Each meeting you'll get 0-3 points and each report 0-2. The trick is that there are 6-7 questions each week that take a fair amount of time to comprehend at least for me, and during your meeting you'll be called on to present one of them at random. I rehearsed the day before my meeting for a few hours going over all of the questions so I could do well in the assessed meetings. Even with that, it was still pretty stressful to try to have a good enough answer to get those 3 points each week and then the lab reports were a nuisance to write. The last week's assignment was to come up with your own fun mini project and I enjoyed that. Overall, Brunelle is awesome but the class can be kind of hard!

Brunelle was always talking to students and helping despite the lectures being async. The lectures are also really well made and are super helpful when working on problem sets. The course is well-designed so that every topic builds on the last. It's also really nice that this course counts for multiple CS reqs and teachs you to use LaTex. The content was not that enjoyable though although I found a few modules interesting.

Brunelle is an awesome professor who sincerely cares for his students. That being said, I felt this class was not about how smart I was, but rather about the situation that I was put in and how well adjusted you can get to the system that is placed. I took the online course, and the lectures were often long and confusing. I rarely understood all the materials from the videos, so I pretty much lived in Office hours. Brunelle often was there to help too, and he was very kind even when I was lost. Some of the TAs were pretty bad for this class though. I would go and they would have no idea how to explain a question, and if I went an hour later to ask another TA, they would explain the same thing but in the complete opposite way. And your cohort group matters A LOT. Mine was luckily full of super smart kids so I got through it. But some of my friends didn't get as lucky as me.

This class is primarily based on group work. There is a group assignment each week that is assessed by a TA is an oral exam format. And an individual write-up is assigned each week which draws 1 question from the group assignment. There is no individual assessment (quiz, exam) throughout the semester, BUT THERE IS A CUMULATIVE INDIVIDUAL FINAL AT THE END. MAKES NOOOOOO SENSE AT ALL!!! WE HAD GROUP WORK THIS WHOLE TIME AND DID NOT HAVE ANY EXPERIENCE PREPARING FOR A INDIVIDUAL ASSESSMENT AND THEY DONT TELL US HOW MUCH IT WEIGHS. STUPIDEST GRADING FORMAT I HAVE SEEN IN MY LIFE !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!