Overall, a valuable experience and the course is well structured. Grading is on an XP scale where points on quizzes, sprint checks, etc. add up to your total grade (950/1000 is an A). I'd say it's pretty normal to get an A, as long as you make timely progress on your application and get decent grades on the quizzes (the content isn't difficult--there were three quizzes that tested your knowledge of lecture content and an opportunity to retake at the end of the semester). Prof. Sherriff is very transparent about the schedule and anything related to grading as well. However, your group, which is randomly assigned, makes or breaks your experience for sure. Plenty of groups have the dynamic where everyone contributes, or at least tries to, which makes team evaluations pretty simple and the app gets done. I had the opposite experience where all of my teammates did nothing (no contribution to the app/no communication). I would say that the course syllabus safeguards against this though since it's made pretty clear that people can fail the course for not contributing to the project's codebase, it was more a rare and unfortunate experience. Other than communicating issues early to course staff and attempting to address the problem within the group as soon as possible there's not much you can do. Based on your group and your prior experience, your workload can vary from 2-10 hours a sprint. Overall, I found it a pretty reasonable course, learned a moderate amount about Django / principles of software development in the real world. #tCFF23

Mark Sheriff is awesome, and this was my favorite CS course in UVA so far. I understand when people say the material can be dry, but I honestly learned a lot about the CS industry, and the way this course is structured was my favorite in any CS course. You don't have much work other than working on your group project throughout the entire semester, and you have weekly quizzes and guided practices that can be easily done through the lectures. The hardest assignment was the Django practice, and PLEASE make sure to do this early! Unless you've used Django before, it's gonna be super hard to do the day before. It is given weeks ahead for a reason. Also, make sure that if you have a bad group member to bring it up to your TA or the professor very early. It will hurt you if they cruise and you don't say anything. I had a bad member and didn't bring it up until last minute so there wasn't much they could do. But don't try to do this project last minute. There are weekly sprints so you will need to show progress. Lastly, about Sherriff, he is great at teaching, but my only gripe against him was that he is kind of a savage lol. Sometimes he would kind of answer my questions in a kind of rude way. I don't think he was trying to be mean and I don't hold it against him.

This is an extremely easy class. Hw is an open note quiz each week. Final can only improve your grade. Semester long project isn’t too bad as long as you have a couple competent coders in your group which the assignment for tends to be fairly balanced in terms of skill distribution. Lastly both professors are chill and genuinely cool people who love video games. If you can take Sheriff tho cause McBurney is slightly harsher on grading (not a huge difference).

Terrible quiz questions. Not intellectually hard, but extremely boring, driving me mad. Topics covered in class are boring too.

Mark Sherriff is one of the nicest professors at UVA as he is charismatic and wants to teach everyone about the material. He has a good personality and generally was a very reasonable person during the online semester. This class is extremely dependent on who you get for your group as the grades mainly consist of sprint checks. If you have a solid group then you should be completely fine workload time-wise. However, if there are a couple of ghosts or bad teammates be prepared to carry. Django itself has a high learning curve but once you finish the tutorial it gets easier towards the end of the semester. The quizzes and written assessments can be a bit unevenly graded sometimes as I'm pretty sure it's graded by a teaching assistant so grades are going to differ. I will say this class is the most useful when it comes to getting hands-on experience for what it's like to work in software development.

This class is a great class to learn about the software development process. The lectures can be a bit dry simply due to the nature of what is being taught, but Sherriff and McBurney do a great job at engaging the students & helping them understand what is being taught. The bulk of the work for this class is a group project, which is very much applicable to the workplace as you are creating an application from scratch. You have weekly meetings with a TA to ensure you and your group are on track to completing the project. There are also quizzes throughout the semester which are pretty straightforward but tedious. This was a great class! #tCFSpring2021

This is one of the more group heavy CS classes offered but I enjoyed taking the class and was lucky enough to have a good group. I know those who had bad groups where members didn’t try as much so their experience wasn’t as great. Most of the semester long project is you looking up how to work with the Django framework but I felt like because I was looking stuff up on my own, I actually felt like I learned a good amount. There were almost weekly scrum meetings with a TA to check in the progress of your group project. Each member in the group was assigned a role such as Scrum Master or Requirements Manager etc. and each role had a document that needed to be completed by the student which counted as a grade. Besides the semester group project, there are guided practices (often done in groups of pairs) and quizzes but I didn’t find these too difficult since they were often based on concepts taught about in lecture. Professor McBurney and Sheriff co-taught the class this semester and I really enjoyed their live lectures. Both professors made an effort to make the live lectures entertaining by playing video game music in the background and by talking about games. The class discord was enjoyable and helpful and students were able to chat in some channels about cute pets and music. Overall I enjoyed this class and would recommend! #tCFspring2021

Sherriff's amazing!! He makes everything so interesting and his lectures are never a bore. He even broke his videos into 20 min chunks for covid. Covid didn't make the class much different. It got easier in terms of grading, in fact, as the quizzes became open-note. You learn some very useful stuff, like modularization, agile (if you've never been exposed to it), licensing, etc.

That being said, your experience heavily depends on the group you get. If you're paired with at least 3/4 solid group members, like I did, you'll have an amazing time. You won't feel overwhelmed. You'll see everyone's contributions blossom into an impressive site that you're all incredibly proud of by the end. If you end up with a bad group on the other hand, you'll hate the class with a passion. My RA once ranted to me and made me almost not take the class lol

Again, it all depends on your team dynamic, which is entirely randomized.

Was overall, somewhat an enjoyable class. Difficulty really depends on how well your team works together and how skilled your group is. You learn a ton of great information helpful for job search so I would definitely recommend you to take the class as early as you can.

Co-taught by Mark Sherriff and Paul/Will McBurney. Honestly one of my favorite classes at UVA, but more because of the semester project rather than course content. The groupmates are random, which... was interesting. It's a 50/50. We had weekly-ish open-note quizzes and "guided practices." They're doable even without going to lecture, but slides are posted and lectures are recorded if needed.