CS 3330

Avoid this guy. He only teaches to fulfill his ego. If you have to drop out of CS to avoid this guy then do that!

Venkat has actually been a great professor this semester. I got put into this class because I was on the waitlist for Tychonoviech and couldn't get off in time, trying everything possible to avoid Venkat who I heard was awful. That said, my expectations were entirely incorrect. This class has been incredibly organized, piazza posts are answered within an hour most of the time and assignments generally graded within 1-2 days. Professor Venkat is very knowledgeable and answers even tough questions that get asked easily since he knows well more than just the content in the textbook. I also talked to his grad TA about it, and supposedly the past incidents were also him getting put in a bad position teaching for his first time without the ability to prepare.

He's seriously gotten the flow down of the class now. It's challenging material, and he's done better than my 2 weeks in Tychonoviech's class even if he's not as interesting of a lecturer. This is still an immensely challenging class where there will be a lot of work, and the biggest issue I have with this class are questions and tasks where the goal isn't always easy to figure out initially. That said, the responsiveness of Professor Venkat and that TAs have made it a much less painful process than it could be. Comp Arch is going to be Comp Arch. I'd seriously recommend throwing out the previous comments and considering his course!

This was definitely one of the more challenging courses I have taken but it helped me truly appreciate computer architecture. I found Venkat's lectures very informative and he was very accommodating throughout. Pretty much every HW got an extension, as students said they needed more time. TAs added OH whenever it felt that students were struggling to understand something. The lab section reinforced concepts learned in the lecture well, however, the exams were still challenging. My raw grade was much lower but due to relative grading, my actual grade ended up being much higher so that's something you should take into account when you don't do well on a certain assignment. A lot of people here seem to be complaining about the content being challenging and I agree that it was, but that is expected of a computer architecture class anywhere (Look at Reiss students taking it rn (fall 2021)). Project 1 is very consuming so you must start early, you get about a month to do it so use that and don't do it in the last week like me. Overall, if you care to understand computer architecture at all, Venkat will make sure you do. Sameera Khan might be an easier A though if that's all you care about as based on my friends all her content can be found online.

The class sucks but Venkat is pretty good.

First off, this class is a lot of work! For comparison, I would say that it is probably around the same level of work and slightly less difficulty than Algo. We had three hours of lecture and one hour of lab every week, although you will spend around six hours a week, with additional time for project 1 (roughly 80 hours overall). Venkat's online class consisted of five homeworks, two midterms, two projects, and one final. The homework assignments are not too bad because you have plenty of time to work on them and the TAs are very helpful. The midterms and final are difficult and you will feel that you did not have enough time, but they are overall pretty fair. Project 1 is extremely difficult and people I spent around 50 hours the week that it was due trying to work on it so you definitely need to start early for that. Project 2 is easy and a grade booster. Venkat is decent at teaching, and while not the best, people unfairly criticize his teaching due to the difficult course material, zoom difficulties, and how time-consuming project 1 is. Venkat is a WONDERFUL teacher because of how accomodating he is and he cared about his students. He was very supportive with my personal issues, and if you reach out to him he is always available to help you during OH or at another time.

I understand that this class is supposed to be difficult, however, some of the elements in this class just serve to make it arbitrarily difficult rather than develop any kind of critical skills in students. For example, there are many test cases for the first project which make up a good portion of our grade. Our group was failing these test cases because we were consistently off by the same value. But because we weren't able to see reverse engineer the content of the test cases from the output, we weren't able to fix this issue. What is spending hours on hours guessing what the test cases are supposed to teach us about computer architecture?

I also believe the expectation is that instructors are not able to assign more projects and assignments during finals week. It appears Prof. Venkat does not know this, as we had a final, the project 2 interview, and the project2 deadline during finals week. This schedule significantly detracted from my ability to study for other exams. Prof. Venkat himself is always gracious in interacting with students and it is exciting that he is so prominent in his field, however, this class could use much structural reform. Do not recommend. #tCFspring2021

I cannot say how frustrating this course was. Anyone who tells you "he's gotten better!" is lying to your face. Prof knows the course is too hard and likes it that way. Said a 60% average on the final was much better than expected and did not curve. Average grade in the course was about a 72 or something and after a whole semester of "stay around the average and you'll be fine!" he did not curve. Your time, effort, and mental health genuinely means nothing to him.

Material:
The material itself is hard enough, but he expects you to know things he never taught. He and TAs often mess up during the live problems and make difficult material even harder to grasp. They will have to backtrack and redo portions either because they misunderstood or forgot something or couldn't read their own handwriting on the slides. Don't EVER fall behind more than a week because there is next to no hope of catching up. The examples done in class seem straightforward enough and if those were the kinds of problems on the homework and exams the course would have been much more manageable. A watered down explanation would be Venkat teaches in class 1+1=2, you'll review 3+2=5 in discussion, and the midterm will have 98+ 32-5*6/7 + 4 with the expectation that you will be able to solve it on your own under a time crunch even though nothing remotely close to that was done in lecture.

Grading:
In order to have a shot at doing well on exams or even homework you have to understand all problems forwards backwards and sideways. Problems are often expanding upon what was actually taught so you'll probably spend at least a few hours not knowing where to start. TAs and prof will give explicitly different answers from each other (ex prof might say yes you need to multiply by x and TAs will explicitly say no you don't need to multiply by x). In my experience go with the answer you have in writing because they WILL take off points even if someone steered you in the complete wrong direction. He spent the whole semester saying "one homework problem isn't a big impact on your course grade" to lure you into a sense of security. Same for overall grading where he said "if you stay around the average you'll be fine!". Well, at the end of the semester the final exam average was a 60 (he congratulated us on doing so well, meaning he expected way lower than a 60%) and the course average was about a 72 which he did NOT curve after he said he would. He said the course would be relatively graded and that we all had nothing to worry about just for 50ish students out of 120 to get GC or fail. I put in countless hours and barely scraped by with credit. They say if you understand the homeworks you'll do fine on the exams which is a lie.

Expectations:
To counter the difficult work, the professor allows homeworks and projects to be done in groups of three. Really that just means 3 of you staring at the problems for a few hours because nobody knows what they're doing (khan's section allowed groups of 7 for reference from what I saw). This is also under the assumption that everyone in the group is in tip top shape (no outside obligations, no mental health issues, no family crises, etc) and can dedicate their full attention to this course. One of the projects they gave us buggy code and a broken autograder that gave 100s to unimplemented files and 0s to perfect code. They told us the day before the project was due (which was also during exam week but not a final project, we had about a week to do it) that it was broken. Because this was during exam week we all were very stressed because we had other exams to study for and couldn't last minute debug our code to see if the autograder accidentally gave us a 100. And i mean this was really last minute like 3 hours before the deadline last minute. The project was worth a good portion of our grade and this grade would be the difference between failing or passing the course for a loooot of us. When we told the TAs we were frustrated with that they were outright rude and gave us the ole "we took a harder version of the course in undergrad, suck it up!"

Heads up, if you're going to office hours for help, you'll actually need to go to about 3 or 4 to actually get a confirmed answer. Many many students have found that the first TA you visit may say the answer is 305, the second TA may say no no it should be 47, and the third TA will say they don't know how to solve the problem and ask if there are any other questions. Unless you have a spare 30 hours each week for one class, do not take this course with Venkat. Keep in mind these TAs have taken the course before and are mostly PHD students...getting different answers for problems or saying they simply don't know how to start. I guess if you think you know more than them then this class will be just right for you!

Other reviews are not exaggerating. This class is terrible. If you can avoid taking this class with Venkat, even if that means taking it over the summer, do that.

Absolute joke of a class, avoid taking CS 3330 with Venkat at all costs. I took 4 CS classes and a STAT class this semester and I spent more time on this one class than the other 3 CS classes and STAT class combined. The course was heavily based on group work and my groupmate got diagnosed with cancer and so was gone for most of the semester. I asked Venkat for accommodations and was basically told to suck it up and it wouldn't be fair to other students. I guess having to do homeworks and projects meant for 3 people by myself is "fair".

As another review cited, "every TA in our TA team, whether they went to UVA or elsewhere, took a harder undergraduate computer architecture course than the one offered this semester" (**********, May 3rd 2021). Basically like saying I guess women's rights don't need to be furthered either since women had it harder in the past. Yikes.

I imagine this class is as close to being in hell as you can possibly get, and that Venkat enjoys this idea.

This is a professor who genuinely takes pride in his class being too difficult. He knows that it is too much for students, and he doesn't care. He wants this class to be 'comparable to those at other top-ranked universities', and somehow that sentiment translated into hands-down the worst class that I have ever taken. I think that the course material by itself is reasonable and manageable, but the way Venkat runs the class is not. Between the homework sets, projects, and exams, you can expect to work the same amount of time as all of your other classes combined. Several students have cried or mentioned thoughts of self-harm during office hours, and the course staff has done nothing to make this class more manageable. And the TAs reassured us by saying that "every TA in our TA team, whether they went to UVA or elsewhere, took a harder undergraduate computer architecture course than the one offered this semester" (**********, May 3rd 2021). Yeah I cited that, because it's so ridiculous that it sounds like I'm making it up. The TAs were definitely very helpful and they put in a lot of work, but they were also always ready to gaslight us into thinking that this class wasn't as hard as it was. Being smart won't allow you to do well in this class either. Before this semester, I had gotten an A in every CS class I had taken at UVA, but, now, I'll be lucky if I can get a B- in this class. The reviews here aren't lying. I don't know if Venkat takes pleasure in the fact that all of his students are suffering or if he just doesn't care, but don't put your mental health at risk by taking this class. Take comp arch with a different professor. Or, if Venkat is the only option, take it next semester.

if you DON'T have a kink for CS professors f*king your GPA AND torturing your every brain cell: 1) please ignore the spring 2020 reviews that you see here or on reddit. 2) if Khan or Reiss is teaching: take it with them 3) if only Venkat is teaching: take it in a different semester 4) else if you are ABSOLUTELY stuck taking it with him: prepare to work 80 hours a week for a C grade.

I took this class with some of the smartest, most hardworking CS majors I know at UVA. I saw them struggle and breakdown in a truly unprecedented way. The class group chat became a collective cry for help with people having constant breakdowns. More than a single person mentioned depression and inclination for self harm as a result of this class to me (there was even a public mention in the groupchat despite of TAs trying to gatekeep).

There were 8 total hours of OH to accommodate a class of 130 students when almost every HW question required TA help or verification. The TAs constantly gave contradictory information or would have different answer keys. Most of the hws and projects were mind gym and helped nothing with understanding. They actually gave us a broken autograder for one of the projects and blamed it on students for not locally testing enough.

Currently class average is 70.32, with no hope for a curve. The relative grading encouraged people to actively sabotage others. Venkat gives extremely simple examples in lecture but fundamental formulas he uses differ from book formulas or other school's formulas so you have no where to go for the complex homeworks.

Final really required a post-doctorate level knowledge and average was 60.

The students in Khan's section faced none of the problems we did. I would have taken her without the sabotaging spring 2020 reviews. Don't repeat my mistake.

Overall I definitely enjoyed this class. Is it a lot of work? Absolutely. The fact is it's just difficult material, and I think Professor Venkat and the TAs did an excellent job of being available and helping us learn. I also never fully understood the concepts until I did the homework assignments so I think they really contributed to class (as much as people often liked to complain about them). Project 1 was also a ton of work but they gave us a lot of time to work on it and it was a very interesting concept. The exams were admittedly not doable in the allotted time (I'm generally a quick test taker and I always ran out of time), but since the entire grading scheme is relative I don't think that mattered too much. Huge shoutout to the TAs that turned around all our grades almost immediately for every assignment. At the end of the day I came away from this class with a solid understanding of processors so I think it did its job.

Venkat is a nice and knowledgeable person, and the teaching team does indeed want everyone to succeed, that said... I'm not sure whether or not the Spring 2020 reviews were genuinely troll reviews, but I suspect that the much larger class size this time around (130 students this semester compared to 25 last semester) may have affected how much support was actually available and how things turned out this time. This one class basically took over my life and turned my whole semester upside-down. I've had to sacrifice my performance in all my other classes to even pray for a chance to get general credit. I definitely recommend doing a reduced course-load and structuring your schedule around this class if you must take it with Venkat.

Homework consists of problem sets that are released and due every two weeks. Venkat slowed down the lectures a bit in the beginning to accommodate the several content clarification questions flooding in from hundreds of students every lecture, but then this came at the price of us not having the knowledge necessary to complete the problem sets until two days before the deadline because we were consistently behind on the material. Furthermore, as the course progresses, attending office hours in addition to lectures becomes a must if you want to stay successful with the problem sets, which can be difficult if you have work or other classes during those times. The content we cover and the practice problems we do in lecture are actually very simple and doable, but then comes the homework problems where you either really have to spend hours doing mental gymnastics to connect the dots... or you go to office hours.

There are two midterms and a final in this class, and they're honestly hard to prepare for. Take careful notes during lecture, you'll probably have to re-watch them several times anyway. Pay attention and follow closely along with the practice problems during lecture as well.

The two group projects are written in C/C++ and advertised as grade boosters, but that's assuming you have a good group where you are able to quickly complete the homework assignments with high confidence and have time and energy leftover to work on the project. The first project takes a colossal amount of time, so definitely try to start early and attend OH to get help when possible. The second project takes significantly less time in comparison to complete, but it'll still involve a considerable amount of frustration. We also had very limited OH to help us with the second project, since at the same time we were preparing for finals. (Also for these projects, I recommend getting familiar with how to scp folders and ssh-ing into CS department servers and testing your code from there. Running things on VM or locally tends to not work well because of the nature of the projects.)

Bottom line is, this class was not a fun learning experience... take Reiss's or Khan's section if you can help it.

Other reviews already speak to how bad this professor is, and I don't have the energy to expand on that. Just don't follow the reviews from Spring 2020, because they are the exact opposite of my experience this semester. I have never experienced a deeper depression or feeling of constant anxiety because of a class, and I'm going to seek therapy this summer. I hope Venkat stops teaching this course and focuses on his research because this class was unreasonably horrible with unrealistic expectations, and I believe that the same cannot be said for Khan or Reiss's sections.

Whoever wrote previously that this course got better, they are trolling (AND I ABSOLUTE HATE THOSE FAKE REVIEWS IN THE GUTS). I was baited into taking this course and oh dear what a mistake I have made. The course is insane, material is extremely difficult with a lot of them being not necessary for a regular CS career (seems like Venkat likes to go above and beyond for no reason). Lectures are mostly conceptual with very little practice, and homework are impossible to do without either re-reading textbook or going to Office hour cuz lecture knowledge does not translate to problem solving. Worst part is the exams and the projects. Most problems on exams are so hard to the point it makes no sense, looks nothing like homeworks and we are always short on time. The projects, especially project 1, is the most cancerous assignment I have ever done at UVA. It's just endless debugging nightmare to simulate MIPs ISA with C. I learned absolutely nothing from the project. I already had in-depth understanding of MIPS, Pipelining and Superscalar before the project. Implementing them is not hard but tedious work and the frustration comes from writing thousands of lines in C which essentially gives you no useful debugging information. I spend hundreds of hours of debugging with my team just to get it to work. The homeworks and projects combined are pretty much gonna take away 80 hours per week if you really wanna get a good grade on those (yes, I had straight weeks where I woke up, get into a call with my group for the entire day, skipping other classes just to get work done). And oh did I mention that Venkat is always behind on lecture? Usually he finishes the chapter 1 or 2 days before due date, yet the whole homework is supposed to give us 2 weeks to do. And when he's behind, he just pushes back homework by a few hours or sometimes a day. Then finals week come, we got everything stacked during finals cuz Venkat keeps pushing everything back bits by bits but refuses to cancel any unnecessary content/assignment. We have a homework, a project AND a final exam all during the finals week. AMAZING organization skills.
TL;DR: Do NOT take this class, it's cancer. Venkat has unrealistic expectations for students and has terrible course organization.

This class was definitely an experience. I'll start out by saying that Venkat is extremely knowledgeable and a nice guy, but this class was not easy. At times it's hard to find the connect between the course content and the assignments; they are often way too difficult compared to what is taught in class so that many people have to flock to office hours to even get an understanding of what the question is even asking. This may be due to the nature of the topic of computer architecture, but this class is hard. The exams are also extremely difficult and hard to prepare for. Venkat is a good guy but this class was definitely not my favorite class at UVA. #tCFSpring2021

I know this class has been historically bad but Venkat has done an amazing job turning things around. If you have to take this in the spring, take it with Venkat! The teaching staff was a huge help and they really wanted everyone to succeed.

Venkat must've done a 180 on this class cus it was pretty awesome and a super reasonable workload. Both him and Ishika were always accessible in case you need help with homework or the projects, so nothing ever took too long. Feel like we learned a lot about comp arch and could always get him to elaborate when we didn't know what was going on. For sure recommend the class with Venkat.

This is one of the best classes taught by a great team of staff. Venkat, Ishika and the TAs are all very knowledgeable about the subject and very very supportive. I highly recommend taking this class with Venkat.

I really enjoyed this class, in spite of everything I heard about past semesters - Venkat and Ishika were really supportive with regards to assignments and grading, and actually care about the quality of the course / success of the students. Their passion for the field is really apparent. The homework could be completed in a reasonable amount of time, the exams were challenging but fair, and the projects were actually really cool (I recommend pacing yourself well on the processor project, you have most of the semester so it's easy to push off).

I definitely learned more than I would have in the other section, and it wasn't a GPA killer like I've heard it described - the class was structured so you can only curve up from your raw score, and I think it was really well-organized overall. TBH was worried about this course initially, and stayed because my schedule didn't fit the other section, but I'm glad I did. Highly recommend

genuinely my second-favorite class I've taken at UVA. venkat has what seems like encyclopedic knowledge of the field and clearly cares about it, ishika paul is extremely down-to-earth and ridiculously dedicated to the students (literally pulling all-nighters to help us finish up projects), and the TAs were extremely helpful too! it sounds like this was a huge change from the last time Venkat taught it, but i'm not joking or being sarcastic or anything. loved the class and would recommend it to anyone, especially in light of the stuff i've heard about khan's section

upvote if you were shafted by that exam and Venkat.

If you were able to manifest the plague into a class this is probably what you'd get.

Very engaging, noticeably knowledgable about the subject. Understanding, cool, kind, smart. Now read the first letter of every word.

I got diagnosed with clinical depression this school year. I thought I was having a hard time until I heard about the kids taking this class.

Man, I don't know y'all. I'm not even a CS major, and this is too much y'all. I don't know if I can do this. This is stressing me out just by looking through the eyes of my fellow CS friends. If you take this class, make sure you have NOTHING else to do with your life and I mean NOTHING. Like you are just dry as hell in your life and have nothing else going on. I'm only saying this because you will need all the time in the world to do this class. Trust me. I don't even take this class. Like I thought Quantum Mechanics II was hard, but this class makes Quantum seem like Algebra I. The average hours were calculated based off student experiences, so they aren't false. Have fun!

Ashish is a genuinely smart professor, interested in helping his students understand and apply computer architecture concepts. However, the day he arrived he got rid of the textbook, implemented problem sets that not even TA's could solve, and lectured on material at twice the speed as Reiss. When asked to solve past-problems in class, he rarely got them right, and claimed they were too trivial for him. It's hard to convey the difficulty of his problem sets and exams, but here's how I perceived them: [In lecture] cars can drive at up to 80 mph, and bicycles can go up to 20 mph. [Problem set] a car is going down the highway at 100 mph, and an elephant is marching in the opposite direction. How many calories are in a bar of chocolate? [Exam] in a world where bicycles are actually horses and chocolate is 200 calories, synthesize these facts with all your knowledge to calculate the circumference of a rubiks cube.

This is my first time writing a review on Course Forum, and unfortunately, I know that this is gonna become berserk. :))) Ashish is not a bad professor. At least from the materials that he prepared and his lectures, I know he's really passionate about the subject and wants us to know about those concepts. However, it seems that he forgot we are undergraduate students who just need to learn the basic concepts of computer architecture, as many of them won't even come any close to comp arch in the future. His problem sets and exams are well-written in terms of content, to be honest. They truly capture the essence of every concept and finishing them does give us a detailed view. BUT THE COST IS TOO MUCH. The problems on the exam are too hard for this limited time. He said in class that he doesn't want us to be problem-solving robots. BUT, honestly, it's gonna take a problem-solving robot to solve all those problems on the exam in an hour and a half.
AND THEN THERE IS THE FINAL. OMG. I've never seen a professor give an exam that's gonna take the whole class more than 3 hours to finish.

As a student who took the ECE Comp Arch, switch to that instead of Venkat, you'll thank yourself later.

I didn't even take the course, but it was just so bad that it's badness seeped into other CS courses I'm taking. It is so bad that our Piazza forum from Discrete Math from over a YEAR AGO probably has more posts of memes of this course than of Discrete Math content last spring.

So, yeah. It's bad, if you take it your grade will be bad, your mood will be bad, your GPA will be bad -- don't be bad.

So I was kinda skeptical that this class actually took 224598437.6 hours a week based on the current reviews. Doing a little math, I found out that many hours was basically equivalent to 9358268.23 days, which surprised me because I didn't think there could be that many days in a week. Giving it the benefit of the doubt (could be a metaphor), I did one more conversion to check the math: the hours actually add up to around 25,639 years of work. 25,000 years ago, according to Wikipedia, " a hamlet consisting of huts built of rocks and of mammoth bones [was] founded in what is now Dolní Věstonice in Moravia in the Czech Republic. This is the oldest human permanent settlement that has yet been found by archaeologists." That's about right- in the time we went from settlements to smartphones, approximately ~1 Venkat Problem Set can be solved (given that we have TA help). At least the Neolithic Revolution didn't get called out for cheating.

Counting down the hours till this mess is finally over.

It's frustrating enough to have been required to take this course - most of the people in the class are not interested / will not go on to do anything in the computer architectural realm of CS. Switching professors halfway through the semester was clearly a half-baked idea that did not need to happen. There were several other things that could have been done that would have been less of a shock to the students in the class. We went from doing about an hour and a half of reading, an hour and a half of lab, and two hours of homework a week to doing all of that in addition to spending 10+ hours on problem sets. The TA's were left hanging out to dry and were given very little instruction on how to best help students working on problems. They were not familiar with the new course material (which is okay and to be expected), but were not given proper guidance or information on how to solve the problems. They worked incredibly hard and struggled with us to solve trivially hard problems. There were problems on the Problem Sets and Venk

ats midterm that were just trivially hard problems that didn't really measure what you knew about computer architecture and the class, but rather were just a measure of how much time you had to try to read incredibly small font and lines and how well you remembered minute details about lecture. He complained we didn't work hard enough and that was the reason the midterm average was a 40%. He said he wouldn't hold our hands through problem sets and problems and he just wanted to introduce us to the concepts and let us learn outside of the classroom. That is perfectly fine for an upper level / graduate level computer architecture course, but this is an introduction into the field with students that know literally nothing about computer architecture. Venk

at is a smart man, don't get me wrong. He can be condescending at times, but overall he is approachable. He needs to be placed at a higher level course with students that have a higher knowledge base. Given all these things -

1) Don't take the class for fun - it is not
2) Don't take the class with 2 professors listed
3) Don't take the class with Venkat

Save yourself and don't do it.

I haven't taken this course with Venkat, but your cries of despair are leaking into other class's piazzas. If you need help, call 1-800-273-8255.

you guys need to calm down. there are plenty of garbage professors at this school. don't throw a temper tantrum because your precious CS GPA's are going down. there are plenty of people with A's in this class. sorry you need to work hard for the first time in your lives.

it's still a BS class and it was a terrible idea to switch professors halfway through the semester, but you crybabies make it seem like venkat personally wants you to fail the class.

Guys the class isn't as bad is what everyone else is saying. As long as you get 7 PhD's before taking the class you're good to go.

See the teaching of Venkat,
He thinks his students are quite the pratts.

He finds it hard to teach his class
when he speaks like a yellow sea bass.

This class was quite the scam,
there is no way to pass the exam.

After one look at these problems,
I knew I would join the fallen.

I miss Reiss with all my heart;
I have no respect for this Venkat fart.

The famous quote to be saved for last:
YOU SHALL NOT PASS!

To feel so desperately that you're right, yet to fail nonetheless. -Thanos - Ashish Venkat

The comments below are slightly beyond ridiculous. Were his problem sets hard? Yes. Were they harder than the homeworks and labs? No. The difference? TAs just give you homeworks and labs, as is the case for most classes at UVa. I blame other classes for making us all so entitled in thinking we deserve to get 100% on everything because we went to Office Hours. It's not like he doesn't curve it fairly - like someone said in the previous post, 50% curves to a B. He put effort into his slides, and thought into his lectures, taught us what most of this stuff that we're learning, which might sound useless is actually worthwhile. Ask anyone before this semester about Comp Arch and they will openly say nothing I learned was worth learning. Do all of us have to be Computer Architects? No, which is why I blame the University for forcing us to take this class. I'm taking ML concurrently and spend roughly twice as much time on it as on comp arch. So does everyone else. Does anyone complain about ML? Not really. It's not Venkat's fault you had to take this class. If you spent half the time you spend complaining about this class on doing the work, you wouldn't be struggling so hard. People who have seen the bright side of things from the start are doing more than well, because they're just not doing the assignments out of sheer anger. Does your grade really matter so much that you have to call a professor some of the worst curse words on course forum? He's making an effort to make this course worthwhile and none of you seem to care about it beyond the cheating debacle, which in fairness was a load of shit for making everyone feel guilty for asking TAs for help. TAs' job is too literally help you get to the answer, without giving it away directly, and if they gave you answers directly then he's right. Are you really paying 30k - 60k$ just for a piece of paper?

A lot of the reviews here were posted right after the second exam and are, understandably, very emotional. Although that's the case, I do believe some of these reviews are just straight up childish and lack any constructive criticism. Let's clear up some misconceptions. 1) The whole cheating debacle did happen, but that's because there were a select few group of students who shared incorrect answers, really easy to pinpoint this when you have some answers in this class that are >7 digits. Venkat essentially followed the university honor policy with this matter and the majority of the class was not affected by this , not even sure of the cheaters were sent to honor. 2) 'TAs were given wrong solutions'. For the second problem set a solution sheet was not created and to add on to the stress the materials Venkat taught were a lot more different than what previous semesters TAs learned when they took the course. This led to a majority of the TAs unable to help students. One TA created a draft solution sheet that Venkat released to other TAs, but he warned them there is a good chance there are some things wrong so don't take it for word. Some TAs , left without a lot of resources, didn't follow this leading some students to wrong answers. 3) Yes the exam was really hard, but it was curved to account for that. A freaking 50% was counted as a B. Good things about Venkat - Very knowledgable guy and has given us a wide range of knowledge within computer architecture. From out of order execution to advanced branch prediction techniques, a lot of the materials Venkat taught us are very applicable to the realm of computer architecture today. On top of this, the problems we are assigned aren't simple copy/paste type problems where you plug in stuff into equations. They force you to think outside of the box and really understand the course to answer them. I really appreciate Venkat for this since I feel like some earlier core classes were missing that aspect. Bad things about Venkat - The main problem is the difficulty of problem sets in my opinion. The jump from the lecture slides to the problem sets is immense and I have felt lost on all of them but the first one. The fact that TAs can't help us is the most frustrating thing ever because you are essentially left for the few professor office hours to get work done on them. I think Venkat needs to assess this jump and possibly decrease the difficulty or add something to lectures that can decrease this difference in difficulty. I'm not sure who this is caused by but this whole professor switch makes me feel like I'm taking 2 different courses. There is a whole lot of disorganization and I really hope this can get cleared up in upcoming semesters. To my classmates, please stop these gross comments and actually give constructive criticism. You're not helping by throwing slurs at the professor. I know it's tough, but let's at least be respectful.

bruh, just don't :/

I HEREBY DECLARE ASHISH VENKAT AN ENEMY OF THE STATE.

Computer Science dept at UVA: I cannot believe that you take hundreds of thousands of dollars in student tuition and give us in return the joke of a professor that is ASHISH VENKAT. The hiring of such an unworthy individual debases this institution. Ashish should be ashamed of the terrible job that he has done and on the reputational damage he has caused to the CS dept and to the University of Virginia. Get out of our University. The sooner the better.

Everything that needs to be said has already been mentioned, but I wanted to come here and respectfully confirm that this is the hardest and most unfair class I have ever taken in my life. I was told before taking the class that it might make me doubt my choice as a CS major, and that couldn't be more true. I feel bad for Venkat, especially if he reads these reviews, but I wish he was given more instruction on how to teach at the undergraduate level. Like others, I dedicate hours per week teaching myself what he fails to teach or glosses over in 5 minutes or less, and reaching the end of the semester now I can't imagine how difficult this final exam will be.

--------It pains me as someone who is usually a good student and can excel in any class given enough effort. This class makes me feel hopeless - no matter how hard I work, it won't be enough. I appreciate that Venkat is extremely knowledgeable about the subject he teaches, but I can't read academic papers outside of class on top of the weekly lab, homework, and problem set he assigns. I just don't have enough time to throw at a class that won't reward me for hard work and doing my best to learn the material. If anything, he may serve the CS department better as a graduate level professor, teaching students at an advanced level who have already taken one or more computer architecture classes.

--------One more thing I want to share because I think it's relevant. After class one day I went to the front and talked to him, on the brink of tears. I believe it was the day he introduced caches to us so quickly that people chuckled when he asked if we had any questions (we didn't even know what to ask because we were so lost!). I told him on behalf of the silent majority, no one understands what he's talking about. I let him know that we are not going to do well if he continues lecturing at this pace. He said he understood and thanked me for coming to him with the issue. For a couple of days after that, I noticed a small difference in the way he taught - he would ask other people to answer the questions instead of the 2 or 3 students who grasped his material in a room of over 50 students. However, he probably set up his lesson plan to get through a certain amount of material by the end of the semester and sped up after a week or so. What upsets me more than anything is that when a student embarrasses themself to go up to the professor and confess that they have no idea what they just listened to for the past 75 minutes, he should take that as a sign that maybe everything isn't okay.

--------You can read the other reviews, and they give more specific details and grievances, but I wanted to share my own personal experience as a generally good student who feels cheated by this class. Bottom line, do not take this class. Best of luck to you and to Venkat, but I have a feeling this is the last undergraduate course he will be teaching at UVA.

Really troll

NOT A TROLL POST
One of the most useful courses I have taken at UVA. I thought this course would just be another blowover requirement like 2150 but Venkat really knows his stuff! He actually makes us learn the material with problem sets instead of having us randomly guess on quizzes with the textbook open. After having done the problem sets, the tests are a breeze! No need to go off previous year's materials. Thank you professor Venkat for teaching me what CS is going to be like in the real world. If only other students would learn to solve their own problems instead of cheating with the TA's...

Cheating on problems sets it stupid!

I just... don't know how to deal with this right now , man.

I have never in my entire 4 years at this university felt so helpless and so unfairly treated. Mental health? Idk her, thanks to this class. Venkat has ruined my last semester at this university. I have done fairly well in every CS class I have ever taken, yet somehow now I spend every day consumed by the fear that this one class will ruin my chances at graduating because he has set us up to fail to a point where it is impossible to do well. I spent hours each day for over a week leading up the second exam studying, going to office hours, re-watching lectures, re-copying notes, working through problems, only to FAIL (like actually fail... <50). I spent MANY hours and days working on the last problem set, both in TA office hours and Venkats office hours, to only get a D. I am TIRED. He has no respect for his students. Hard work means nothing to him if you cannot keep up with this impossible workload and decipher the weird nonsense he asks you on the problem sets and tests. But don't worry, he has made it super clear that he thinks we are lazy anyways! At this point I am ELATED to leave UVA. Shame on the CS department for thinking it was a) okay to bring in a new (awful) professor halfway through the semester for LITERALLY no reason and b) doing nothing about it after an ENORMOUS amount of student feedback that I am almost positive your department has never seen before. It's great to know that our concerns mean nothing. And honestly everything I just wrote doesn't even cover 1/4 of the BS that we have all been put through since he got here because there aren't even words for it. Good riddance to all of this.

Pretty obvious from the other reviews, do not take this class with Venkat. If he is the only one teaching, wait till next semester. Reiss was a whole lot better and understanding, Venkat ruined this course for me and many other students.

Ashish Venkat is a dishonor to the whole CS department

I hope he never comes back from his conference.

i just gave up on the problem set.

Dude sucks. Not much else to say

EDIT:
Mr. Ashish Venkat, as Assistant Professor of Computer Science, for the period August 7, 2018 through May 24, 2021, at an annual salary of $153,300. Citations 177

Mr. Charles Reiss, Assistant Professor of Computer Science, effective December 25, 2017, at an academic year salary of $90,000. Citations 1350

HOW THE FUCK IS THIS POSSIBLE, AND THIS GUY IS GOING TO BE HERE FOR ANOTHER TWO YEARS????

This guy is the most cocky-ass-dontGiveAShit professor I have ever met/heard in my four years of college. I assume he knows the material since he is a Ph.D. (though making tons of mistakes in lecture and problem set), but the way he treats his students is abhorrent. All the comments below fully address how he taught this class accurately. The main reason I choose UVA over other schools is that the professors genuinely care about their students and motivate us to learn. I don't think this dude even qualifies a single bit of it.

The average for midterm 2 is 48/100, tells a lot about what you will learn in this class. And he mentioned the final will even be harder :) Hope the course evaluation will stop the CS department giving him any contract in the future.

I'm gonna be honest. I haven't even taken this course, and Venkat is still somehow the worst teacher I've ever heard of. I've watched some of his lecture intros per recommendations from friends, and honestly heard him say that he doesn't believe in teaching students how to solve problems. Instead, he wants to tell them the question statement and final answer, and that any other instruction would be a waste of class time...so the way to teach people...is by making them learn it on their own...but if they learn it with any help that's cheating and the entire class will be threatened with honor violations. Hell, even the TAs could get in trouble too, because clearly helping students somehow goes against their job description. FYI for anyone reading these reviews, make sure to subtract one from his overall score since we can't go any lower than one.

Venkat is the most condescending professor to ever turn up at the CS department. As the other reviews have already mentioned, 1) he assigns the worst problem sets 2) he VICTIM SHAMED every student into believing that he/she cheated on one of the problem sets for asking help from the TAs, all because he gave a faulty answer key to the TAs. As a result, everybody who asked for TA help all had problem set answers that "reflected" the errors in the answer key, and 3) his exams are almost nothing like his problem sets (even though he says they are), and much less his powerpoints. As if this class couldn't get any worse, he legit rubbed (a Pacific Ocean's worth of) salt into injury by bragging about how little his powerpoints and lectures will actually help us in solving the problem sets and the exams, saying that "we're supposed to understand how a computer works" and not have our "hands held" in the process. First of all, how on god's green Earth are we supposed understand how a computer works if you can't even teach us how a computer works. Am I supposed to learn this stuff online or from other sources? I (and my family) are not paying thousands of dollars in tuition just so I can end up learning everything from better Indian teachers on YouTube and Google (for free I should mention). I have to be honest, I never bother writing reviews for course, but my god, you have to be a certain level of Satan spawn to drive me to actually rant on CourseForum. Needless to say, I wish Reiss could come back; unlike Venkat, he tries to set his best to set his students up for success in the class, not failure. While Reiss's quizzes were somewhat annoying, they were manageable (wtf, they were a BLESSING compared to Venkat's psets). I wish now more than ever that I could have taken this class in another semester (Venkat isn't even teaching next semester). At this point, I just hope I can at least somewhat pass this class with a digestable grade of some sort. Literally I would recommend anyone else in the CS department (even Upsorn) to teach this class instead of Venkat. If you are taking any class with this dude, good fucking luck.

Easiest final ever. Assuming we're tryna get a 0

i'm gonna keep it so real with you guys, never have i ever hated a class more than this. i genuinely do not think i'm gonna pass and that is a 100% because of venkat and the cs department as a whole for deciding that it was a good idea to switch professors in the middle of a course.
let's start with my mans venkat. as other reviews have mentioned, we had a super fun cheating scandal! i love when professors threaten you with honor code violations that you didn't commit :) <3 he literally teaches us nothing in lecture and assigns some wack problem sets to do (bring back the reading quizzes plz). i put in a lot of effort trying to get the hw done and honestly i'm running out energy and tolerance for this class. his slides are essentially useless and the practice problems we do, don't even help with problem sets.
i've had many ragrets in my time as a uva student, but none of them are as big as taking comp arch this semester and having venkat as a professor.
@ the cs dept pls never again switch up a course halfway through the semester. I enrolled specifically in the 11 am lecture to have reiss as my professor because that is who was listed on sis. i didn't take this class to have a new and condescending professor. stick with what works.

TL;DR: save your soul and don't take a class with him lol

What I always tell people about this course is that although the material is difficult to make interesting, exciting, etc. for many students, it was always evident that Professor Reiss did the best he could with the course. Now, that being said, let's get into Venkat...

When I took this class, Reiss stopped teaching after the first exam to allow Venkat to take over. In his first lecture, he claimed he would be changing the course somewhat by introducing problem sets, in addition to the labs and homeworks already assigned by Reiss' schedule. He also claimed he would provide a bigger incentive to go to lecture by doing problems which would have similar variants on future problem sets and the exam.

----- With regards to Venkat's "incentives," here is what I gathered: a) he quickly runs through problems without explaining the steps he is using to get there or the methodology behind those steps; b) the problems are complete jokes compared to the ones which appeared on the second exam and in problem sets he has assigned; c) knowing how to the problems in lecture is no bearing on how well you will do on the exam or problem sets.

----- With regards to the problem sets: they are difficult, but not impossible. They often require several hours of looking back through the material which Venkat "covered" during lecture, however this typically provides little benefit since his so-called annotations on the slides are illegible (and in the event you do spend 10 minutes to decipher something he write, they aren't usually helpful). Also, need I mention the cheating accusations? It's almost like Venkat is paid based on the number of students which he is able to accuse of cheating. Don't even bother going to TAs for help on the problem sets because a) they usually can't do the problems at all because Venkat has introduced new material without explaining it to his teaching assistants; b) if a TA gives up and just tells you the answer, you have to either unhear it or face the penalty of cheating (according to Venkat, from lecture).

----- With regards to the exam: prior to the exam, a student asked Venkat if he would be producing a practice exam with solutions, as Reiss had available for the first exam (Reiss actually makes all previous exams available, with the answer keys as well). Venkat abruptly said no, you have had enough practice. At this time in the course, we had been assigned 2 problem sets of <5 questions each, and Venkat had been teaching for a few weeks. Normally I wouldn't find this annoying, but Venkat actually said that he would be using a brand new test format closely aligned with the problem sets he assigns, rendering all of Reiss' previous exam resources unhelpful. I'll just go on the record here and say that 2 questions on the test resembled problem set questions, and the rest were totally new. He also had a true false section, which he did not discuss prior to the exam (and his problem sets do not have T/F on them), which contained an acronym he had never discussed in lecture. The day before the exam I looked through every slide and I have no reccolection of him ever discussing it.

---- Don't take this class with Venkat. Don't take this class if you have heard there is even a CHANCE Venkat may show up to teach a lecture. That said, I don't think future students have much to worry about because at this rate I doubt Venkat will be at the university in his current capacity for much longer.

Sad the lowest rating we could give is a 1.

It’s the night after the second midterm, and I’ve been sitting here writing and rewriting this review for hours because nothing is accurately encapsulating and conveying how absolutely frustrating this class is. The further the semester progresses, the more I’m convinced that this class has to be someone’s twisted idea of a joke. Nowhere else have I seen a professor accuse their students of cheating off the TAs on a problem set—solely because the answers that a lot of students turned in reflected the same exact mistakes that were in the answer key provided to the TAs. And I’m beside myself that his *very logical* solution to solving this nonexistent cheating scandal was to not provide TAs with the answers to the next problem set. I’ve also never met a professor who assigns another problem set right before a midterm, decides to put material from that problem set onto said midterm, but then doesn’t provide any resources for students to verify that they’re doing the problems correctly before taking the exam. Honestly, I’m just waiting for the day where the cameramen pop out of nowhere during lecture and someone announces that this whole semester has just been one giant prank.

EDIT: Now that it's the end of the semester, I feel strongly compelled to give this an update. A single class has never made me feel so unbelievably stupid like this one has--and it's not from a lack of trying on my end. I've spent more time on this class than all my other classes combined this semester, and I still understand absolutely none of the material. He doesn't listen to suggestions from anyone (students, TAs, other professors), and he says to go to office hours if we need help, but his office hours are some of the most unhelpful things I've ever been to. Venkat's singlehandedly been responsible for many mental breakdowns and a serious deterioration of my mental health so for that I'm so very grateful :)))))))

I don't know who the heck gave him high ratings, but I found it more accurate when it was at a 1.15. You have to be extraordinarily shitty at your job to make Reiss look like this much of a godsend.

I miss Reiss </3.

Save yourself and DO NOT take ANY class with Venkat. I don't know how this dude got hired to teach this class in the first place. Ever since he came in in the second half of the course, everyone's lives have been going downhill and it's just miserable. He assigns problem sets that are literally impossible - TA's won't be able to help you with them because 1) According to Venkat, going to TA's for help is cheating 2) They don't know how to solve the problem sets, either 3) Venkat previously gave them the wrong answer key and now won't provide them any answer keys at all in the first place. He refused to give us enough information about the format of the exam and kept repeating "it's the same as the problem sets and the in-class examples." Well, I took the second exam today and can tell you for sure that problem sets and in-class examples did not help at all for the exam and the difficulty was outrageous. He assigned a problem set 2 days before the exam informing us that the content in the new problem set (when there is absolutely no access to any kind of help guiding us how to solve the problems) will be on the second exam. However, no one knew how to solve those problems because we are now not allowed to ask any of the TA's for help or talk about the problems even conceptually with other students because that is "cheating." Venkat teaching this course has been the worst thing that has happened to me since getting into UVA and I am sure other students feel the exact same. If his goal is to guide his students to failure, he's doing a great job.

Highly not recommended w/ Venkat. Reiss taught the first part of the course and Venkat took over afterwards. Reiss's portion was very well organized and well thought out. Venkat's portion has been a mess so far. Mistakes everywhere in the slides, teaching, and problem set solutions. TAs do NOT know the material (Venkat introduced a ton of new topics this semester) and can't help. Venkat repeatedly said that the exam would be like problem sets and in class activities. However, we never went over the problem sets in class and a 3rd problem set was released 2 days before the exam with exam material on it (and no solutions to check your understanding were provided). Terrible.

F

Venkat probably isn't meant to be a professor. He knows his material, but it doesn't sound like it in lecture. He is attempting to single-handedly change the course to include information he deems more relevant. Spoiler alert, it's not. Most of us aren't trying to go into computer architecture, and the things he's trying to teach us would better fit into an advanced computer architecture class.
My biggest complaint with him is that he asks his students to know material that he barely teaches in class. We teach ourselves in Piazza and in office hours and lab. Unfortunately for us, the TAs are learning the material right along with us (as well as being loaded with more work than they should be doing, particularly the graduate TAs). This means everyone is trying to learn the material and the professor doesn't have the temperament or the ability to explain material to us in an understandable way. His problem sets are deathly as they far exceed the weekly suggested time you are supposed to spend on homework. I don't know a single student in the class who has completed a problem set in under 5 hours, much less the 2.5 they suggest. He's also trying to write an entirely new midterm exam, and simply tells us that the problem sets (which take much, much longer than an exam block) and the in-class exercises (which are just like the problem sets) are representative of the problems we'll face on the exam. I don't know if he realizes that he is setting his students up for failure, but everything he does is detrimental.

Everything was fine when they had Reiss teach the first half of the semester—who decides it's a good idea to switch the professor (and also the teaching style) in the middle of the semester? I've considered dropping my CS major because of this guy, and I have wanted to study CS since I was in middle school. Ultimately decided to keep it, but man, if you can avoid this guy, avoid taking his classes. Take it a different semester, beg your advisor to teach it instead, anything.

You can't win in this class because only Venkat knows the answer key and it's sometimes wrong too. Not even Reiss or TAs can help you or the textbook or any other resources. So you gotta just speak with him, but he won't help you that much with the problem sets. You just on your own with some stuff you haven't learned.

Two CS students walk into a bar. They're not quite sure what's available, so they ask for a menu. The bartender hands them menu, and they ask what's in one of the drinks from the menu. The bartender is unsure how to make the drinks, so he goes to the kitchen. He returns with a drink recipe, and as he's showing the students the ingredients, Venkat bursts out of the kitchen, accusing the CS students for cheating as they asked for a menu that they were supposed to memorize for a bar they have never visited, and for not making the drinks themselves because its supposed to be a "learning experience".

So yeah, this class sucks. We don't know anything and we're not taught anything. It's as infuriating as visiting a bar where you're expected to mix your own drinks.

Professor Venkat is very knowledgeable about computer architecture, however he fails when trying to relay this knowledge to students. He does not understand what students need to learn and does not communicate with Reiss or the TAs about his plans for the course. He gave the TAs answer keys to a weekly problem set that were slightly wrong to see if students recreated these errors, and when they did (since the TAs thought this is how the problems were done) he decided to not give answer keys to any TAs for the future problem sets. The second test includes material that we have had no practice on whatsoever, and he provided no practice problems to learn the material. When asked about all of this in class, he refused to change anything. If you have to take this class with this professor, don't take it.

Venkat, a haiku:

exams on steroids |
getting TA help: cheating |
just suffer - Venkat

I was told things as a BACS major would get better after 2150. Spoiler alert: they did not. This class is incredibly frustrating, much due to the fact that we switched professors in the middle of the semester. The two professors have completely different methods of teaching and content. This was very hard to adjust to because the entire course structure changed. Even more so, I've witnessed on more than one occasion one professor coming up to the other to tell him he was wrong about some point and they would argue about it! If the professors themselves can't even agree on a correct answer or method for a problem, how are we expected to know? Furthermore, TAs themselves are not familiar with the new course material that the new professor has brought in and because of this, they often tell us that they do not know the answer or cannot help us. This is not at all their faults but leads to an incredibly frustrating situation where we as students don't know what's going on, can't get help from the TAs because they were never taught this, can't use the textbook as a resource because the new course material does not go off it (though the first half of the course did), and therefore have literally no frame of reference as even the professor himself frequently makes mistakes and only catches them when students point them out! What makes this even more ridiculous is that the professor prefaces every problem with saying "it's so obvious, so easy" which is so patronizing and clearly not the case since pretty much everyone is beyond lost in his class.
tl;dr this class wack

If you love yourself as a person in any way, please do not sign up for this class with Venkat.
#1 - He makes numerous mistakes while going over in-class examples, which is extremely frustrating when rewatching the lectures in attempts to learn the material, because
#2 - he goes through the material insanely quick in class. He breezes through crucial concepts within a minute.
#3 - Assigning problem sets worth 15% of our grade, IN ADDITION to homework AND labs is outrageous. The majority of my week is dedicated to TA office hours, which brings me to
#4 - Venkat has voiced his disapproval that students have been using the TAs for help on the problem sets. Students should not be held accountable for the fact that TAs give them the answers because even the TAs do not know how to solve the problem sets.
I signed up to be taught by Reiss, and am extremely disheartened that this is not the case.

we are given insanely hard problem sets and topics which TA's are unable to help us with, and we are told working with other students on problem sets is cheating. feeling hopeless upset and frustrated.

While I think Professor Venkat is intelligent and is passionate about Computer Architecture, he is a poor lecturer. He moves quickly along complicated topics, just scribbling on his lecture slides in his illegible handwriting. He explains course material in an extremely vague manner. He assigns extremely hard problem sets on top of the labs and homework, which makes this course way more difficult. Venkat also just assumes that the moment he explains it once, you will automatically understand it. This class requires you to teach yourself material which is difficult when you don't have a textbook or TAs for help (since Venkat is teaching material new to the TAs). I definately spent more time teaching myself the material than learning from Venkat, and I attended every lecture, did every assignment and went to every lab. Overall, I think this class is disorganized and has caused more stress than actual learning. I am disappointed in the department for switching the professor and the course material midway through the semester and I think that this did the students a great disservice. If no other sections are open, and you have to choose between dropping the CS major and taking a class with this professor, I would drop the major hands down.

Welcome to the course forum review for AsHiSh VeNkAt. Take a seat and lemme summarize you some things about vEnKaT with a growing list of what this guy really is: .................

1) Apparently asking Teacher ASSISTANTS for ASSISTANCE violated some fucking rule of Venkat's 10 commandments and apparently doesn't know how Office Hours works. Petty the way he is, he docked everyone that asked the TA FIVE POINTS off of a Problem Set which brings the majority of people down to an automatic 83% on what was an already shitty problem set. -----------------

2) His slides itself are already shitty enough, I had to look at Reiss's old slides and lecture to do Memory HW and was able to do it with the help of Reiss's slides. Like other reviews have already said: a) His handwriting is some ass, b) he makes mistakes the majority of the time, c) talks fast so you have no idea what the actual shit he is saying, d) his lecture slides are ass compared to Reiss's who actually shows step by step processes (because apparantely, according to Venkat's words, we can't have our "hands held") -----------------

3) Don't even get me started with the HORRID, ATROCIOUS, DISGUSTING PROBLEM SETS. WHO IN THE RIGHT MIND SAID TRADING THE QUIZZES FOR THE PROBLEM SETS WAS A FAIR TRADE?? Like at least the quizzes were manageable since we actually had the resources with the textbook and the slides to do the quizzes. But these problem sets ... THESE PROBLEM SETS ... I have no words for how absolutely difficult these problem sets are, with the fact that the slides dont do SHIT as a resource for helping you on the problem set. Again, being the petty guy he is, he adds the honor code because he thought asking help from TAs was considered cheating. It's literally like he doesn't want students to do well on his problem set and hurts his egotistical conscience. AND YET, PEOPLE are STILL collaborating on these problem sets and being the oblivious guy he is, he will never get a single hint of it if he himself has never been to office hours in Stacks. -----------------

4) I went to lecture a few times ever since Venkat started teaching because I found myself to be wasting my time. I went to check how many people come to class and I was not surprised at all by the turnout.
-----------------
5) The average on the second exam made by his truly was a 48%. Not much to explain with this average that is less than a 50% lmao. Also said the exam would be just like the problem sets we did (CLEARLY, they were not). He also assigned a new problem set saying that part of the problem set that was JUST assigned would also be on the test. I guessed my way through the entire exam and somehow managed to get above the average, kinda goes to show how terribly wrong this exam is. -----------------

6) Terrible lecturer. His lectures are on Panopto and are probably public. If not, ask for someone in this class and you'll understand. -----------------

7) Honestly feel bad for the TA's because they can't even do their job because Venkat won't even help the TA's ... it's quite disappointing. -----------------

8) Venkat started teaching after the drop deadline was passed, so that really shafted a lot of people . -----------------

9) Somebody puts these assignments on Chegg and Venkat either knows, doesnt know, or just ignores it lol, even though he went ham about the honor code ..................... EDIT: I just took the final and , NOT TO MY SURPRISE AT ALL, was devastating

Venkat is getting paid 150k while Charles Reiss is only getting 90K.... Venkat must be on the cusp of winning the Turing Prize then because his teaching and attitude are abysmal. #HORRIBLE