CS 3240

Sherriff is one of the best professors I've had as a CS student. I'm genuinely excited to go to class everyday (despite it being a 9:30AM) and I always have a laugh in lecture. He knows how to impart knowledge while engaging his students. I would say that he is also a fair person. There are several Guided Practices (i.e. in-class activities) throughout the semester, and you are given one virtual make-up for whatever reason. There are also a couple team evaluations, where you can bring up any concerns and this gives him and the TAs a better sense of how to evaluate your team project.

Like most people have already said, the trajectory of your team project is heavily dependent on the quality of your teammates. I personally had a great vibe going on with most of my group-mates and we managed to put out a decent beta version (currently still in the thicket of the semester). We definitely had a major road bump with one person and that severely hindered our progress, but our TA said that the project will be evaluated based on our circumstances, which I think is chill. On a weekly basis, I definitely spend a lot of time working on the project, each sprint asks for very little, but we're told that they will hold us to a fairly decent standard (meaning working app, good usability, not totally ugly). Working on your app little by little every week and doing a little more than the sprint asks for is for sure the move.

Quizzes so far have seemed fair (I've only taken 2/3 so far). If you go to class, pay attention (not hard b/c it is entertaining), and take a day or two to review before the quiz, you will be more than set. Sherriff also offers an online coursepack as supplementary material and this includes lecture recordings from COVID times (super helpful).

TLDR: This class demands a decent amount of work, but it won't seem like it if you enjoy this kind of project. Sherriff is goated.

Sherriff is great professor. Whether or not you will enjoy the material really depends on if you are interested in the project management/logistics side of software development, but Sherriff is such an entertaining, engaging professor nonetheless. The quizzes have a full retake at the end, so it's no pressure. Studying at least the day before definitely helps, though. For the project, you're really only given a general theme and the specific project you work on is up to your group. My advice is to not add a lot of complexity to your project, since there's actually less time to write code than you think (considering requirements gathering takes up time in the beginning, and beta testing is well before finals). If you have time, you can always add more features at the end, and I think having a really nice frontend (in addition to having a fully working app) goes a long way.