CS 4750

Databases is dry material. There's a lot more about theory of how/why/when databases became a thing, and not as much material about using SQL or implementing stuff as you'd think. There was a semester project that ended up being a bit of a joke because I'm pretty sure the grade was based off peer review. Homeworks were actually fairly reasonable. Tests were difficult but reasonable if you paid attention, read the slides, studied, etc., but therein lies the issue--- He lectures off the slides that come with the textbook (which you can find for free online), and those slides aren't great. He has a strong accent, but some students like myself got used to that, and he's trying harder to improve that. But his lecturing style is not engaging and the material is already fairly dry. Abdeltawab also had guest lecturers multiple times and was out of town, as well as telling students to do presentations etc, most likely because he didn't want to teach any more than he absolutely had to. DB is kinda useful but because of how boring it is, this ended up being the worst class I've taken in my 4 years at UVA, and I've taken a lot of god awful classes. A different slide-set would probably make the material that much better. But really though, you learn all you need about databases from web PL or cloud or something similar. Don't enter the god-forsaken hellhole that is CS 4750. You have been warned.

Pretty easy class, but the material is extremely dry. The prof basically explains vocab words, one after the other, in class. He teaches from the slides that the textbook publisher provides, so the lecture is exactly the same as the textbook, if not less in depth. If you read the book and take good notes, it'll be a better replacement than attending lecture. His accent affects my comprehension a lot as well. Take this class when Basit teaches it!