CS 3330

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.

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.

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.

Dude sucks. Not much else to say

i just gave up on the problem set.

I hope he never comes back from his conference.

Ashish Venkat is a dishonor to the whole CS department

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.

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.

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