CS 3240

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).

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.

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

I had to take this class for engineering but I would definitely recommend it to any CS BAs. It's not hard at all and the project is actually really enjoyable. It's great to look back on what you have accomplished over the semester. The exams are also not hard as long as you pay attention to his lectures. #tCFF23

I think a lot of your experience with this class really depends on your group for the project. The semester long project makes up the majority of your grade, so it's important to address any issues with your group at the beginning of the semester. The Django tutorial in the first month of the semester is not hard at all, you just have to start more than 2 days before it's due. As long as your group works together well and turns in something that is functional, you will probably get an A in this class. The quizzes aren't hard at all, and the retake at the end is helpful for making up missed points. Overall, I think I actually learned a lot about scrum development from this class and would recommend to people looking to work in SWE. #tCFF23

This class is utterly useless. Professor Sheriff tries to make it interesting, but the subject matter really is quite dry. The project is what made me hate this class the most; it is drawn out over the entire semester with 6 sprint checks and these half-baked nonsense reports made to fit each of your team member's contrived roles on the team. The grading is overly harsh and this class takes itself WAY too seriously. The "positive reinforcement" grading was likely something cooked up in a sterile educational research setting and if anything it stresses you out more since this is the only CS class I know of that cuts off A's at a 95%. Don't take this class if you're a BACS major.

I loved this class. It was really refreshing taking a chill class thats just about concepts and how to work well on a SWE team. This was super refreshing and made me realize why I enjoyed CS and my perception of that was probably dismantled due to DSA and CSO...but theres just one major project that you develop throughout the semester and its hard to not do well In the class #tCFS24

In this class, we worked with a random group of 5 the whole semester to build a web app. I felt like the work was slow paced, and that I probably would've learned more if the groups were smaller, but the workload was really manageable. I loved Professor Sherriff, and he made the material much more interesting. You don't need to do any pre-readings for lectures, so outside work is just coding the project and team meetings. #tCFS24

Sherriff is super engaging during lecture and jokes around often. As a predecessor to CS 3140 (SDE), it was way easier and less technically intensive. The quizzes/tests are more so centered around software engineering tools and the field itself rather than the nitty gritty technicalities of programming. The only thing that is more difficult about this class is the project you work on with a randomly assigned group where you learn new tools without much guidance. Depending on your group, the project can be harder for you than another one of your classmates which is unfortunate, but for the most part, groups seem to usually work out. #tCFS24

- COURSE -
To a lot of students, CS 3240 ends up being their favorite CS class taken at the university. However, that really depends on how passionate you are about CS going into the course. The class is essentially is a guided experience of what it's like to work on a scrum team, designing a piece of software over the course of a semester. It's almost like an internship you do for a grade instead of money or job experience. In my experience, I didn't hate the course, but I wasn't really a huge fan of it either. I think it's almost a bit too free-reign, and the semester-long project's milestones only cover a certain amount of what you're doing, which you're expecting to go above and beyond for. There are TAs assigned to each group, but the extent of how helpful they are really depends on the TA. Basically everything in this class is just going to depend on how good the people surrounding you are. There are 3 exams, which aren't too hard but whose grading can be really confusing. They unfortunately tend to revolve a lot around rote memorization, which I really disliked.

- INSTRUCTOR -
Sherriff is honestly a great professor. He's funny, his lectures are entertaining, and he's very knowledgeable about the subject field. He also tends to end lectures early, so there's no pointless downtime meant to use up all of the 75-minute lecture.

If you're genuinely interested in pursuing a career in CS, this class is basically essential. It's going to let you get a taste of the experience of working on a software development team. However, the group you get assigned to will basically dictate your entire experience in this class.
#tCFS24