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.