CS 4102

I LOVED this class! Professor Wu and Professor Brunelle both did a great job teaching and clearly enjoyed what they were doing. The course material was not only quite useful, but also very fun. Each HW problem was a fun and challenging puzzle that I would have to keep on the back of my mind for days or just spend hours thinking about it until I came up with a solution. I also loved reading the "backstories" that the instructors came up with for each word problem :)

This may have just been me, but I think this was the most difficult and time consuming class I've ever taken (certainly more than 2150). Lectures ended up being split between Brunelle and David Wu, both of whom are super solid lecturers and are both thorough and clear in their teaching. The only assignments in our class were weekly homeworks (written and programming) and quizzes (done at the end of every unit). Brunelle and Wu were largely super understanding and considerate throughout the course; they offered retakes for every quiz including a final re-retake at the end of the semester instead of a final, and offered extensions on assignments when needed/appropriate. With that being said, the weekly homeworks tended to be miserable for me. Several of the assignments required multiple days on end (with other work having to be neglected) in order to complete them properly. Because the grading is based not on your average but instead on your individual units, you generally have to do well on every single assignment (although the threshold for an A was lowered to 85% on all units because of this). I highly recommend going to office hours whenever you need (especially Mohit if he is TAing again).

Algo is definitely difficult, but doable. You have at least an assignment due every week, and sometimes a quiz as well, but never due on the same date. You are permitted to work with a group of 5 (including yourself) for the whole semester. Professor Brunelle cares about his students, but sometimes he can come off as passive aggressive. Another tricky thing is that sometimes problems are worked out in workshop (which is optional) as opposed to lecture, so you have to watch those to get a hint at the assignments. I'd recommend going to office hours throughout the semester - the TAs helped me a lot.

Nate's such a sweet professor. He genuinely cares about his students and structures the class so that anyone can succeed. Homeworks are very difficult but they're worth 60% of the grade and he provides TONS of office hours (like there's probably 30 or so a week in total). If you try the homework problems beforehand and then go to office hours for help, you'll have no problems doing well on them. Go to office hours early so you can have some personal attention. Sofia, Grant, Tanya, and Eli are particularly helpful TAs. Beware of homework 6. The tests are incredibly fair, and there's only a midterm and a final, each worth 20% of the grade and non-cumulative. Of all the CS X102 classes I've taken, this is my favorite because it's the most applicable and helpful when solving real coding problems. He really incentivizes you to try hard above all. Definitely take it with Nate if you have the chance!

Brunelle is a super chill professor that really enjoys interacting with students during class. This crash course on algorithms takes you through a bunch of things pretty fast like dynamic programming, divide and conquer, etc, but the homework sets are the main part of this class and they are HARD. Many people have to go to office hours and your group will spend hours either working on them together or divvying up the work load. There's very little coding in this class except for 2 homework assignments, so expect more theoretical things (it's basically discrete part 2). Exams were relatively easy, working on the practice midterm and going through the slides seemed to net most the points. The midterm and final had one pretty hard "interview" question where you had to apply your knowledge, and those were pretty tough but on the midterm you could earn some points back on this problem by doing the take-home part which was coding the answer to the question. I won't miss the hours spent on those problem sets scouring old CS academic papers or stack exchange answers, but I did learn a fair bit that's useful for interviews, so there's that. Overall, decent class.