The grade distribution for Winter 2021 was thus:

5 A's
15 A-'s
2 B+'s
3 B's
1 C-

If you take this course, pray.....and then make sure you triple check your homework against the homework codes. I pulled off an A with no previous coding knowledge (except pic 10a with a different, much easier professor) and getting 20s on homeworks really came in clutch. I think I learned a ton but this was the most anxiety inducing time of my life. Mike got our final grades out within a day of the last hw submission, though, so....thank you king...

Do and don't be afraid of Professor Lindstrom. Do because his homework is incredibly difficult (I spent an average of 12 hours per week on each assignment). Don't because he is one of the most helpful teachers I've ever had. He cares so much about his students' learning and answers literally any question you pose (whether related to programming or not). I love this guy. I would definitely take this class again with him. I feel like I've learned a lot from him. He's also super sweet. He made our final worth only 2% because of the math department's policies about little accommodations. He really cares about you!

Professor Lindstrom is one of the best professors I have ever had in my two years at UCLA. This was the first quarter we had remote instruction and Mike was super understanding and considerate of the situation. The majority of our grade was from homeworks, because he understood that exams were unfair in the given situation. The homeworks were really difficult and took many hours, but it gave me a really good understanding of the course material It was very clear that he truly cares about his students and student learning.

If you struggled with PIC 10A I would not recommend taking this course; however, if you enjoyed PIC 10A, I would definitely recommend taking this class with Prof Lindstrom. He is incredibly clear and includes many, many helpful slides to accompany his homework assignments. Although the homework assignments are very difficult and require a lot of work, they are also very detailed, well-thought out, and really help you to learn the material inside and out. I will say though that the grading for this class is extremely nit-picky and you need to be very careful to follow all of the homework guidelines Prof Lindstrom provides. After taking this course, I would say my programming skills have improved beyond my expectations.

Prof Lindstrom is one of my favorite professors I have had at UCLA so far. In his lectures, office hours, and even through his emails he makes it clear that he not only wants us to do well in the class, but also to really appreciate the material we are learning. He is also super helpful outside of class and always invites questions and answers them carefully.

As it was online, this class was structured differently than usual. Homework was worth 78%. The assignments took some time and were challenging but most of what we needed was in his lecture slides and he was very available and helpful for questions. He goes through a lot of content but as there were basically no exams (the final was worth 2% and was a creative project) I only really learned what I needed for the homework. In the end he gave mostly As and some Bs.

The grade just went out and looking bak to this class I do have some tips to share.
Mike is a really nice, knowledgeable, and caring instructor. Don't be sacred off by the work load and difficulty because you do learn a lot about C++ and right now I can say I'm pretty confident about my C++ knowledge because of this class.
To get good grade: try to do every homework assignment! Although the lowest two are dropped, it is easy to have bugs that are hard to be fixed in those lengthy challenging assignments. Before the midterm/final, go over every slide and try to rewrite the code by yourself instead of just browsing over.
NOTICE: workload is challenging. Each homework may take 5-15 hours to complete and by the time of final you'll have 1500+ slides to study for.
Still I'd say this class is doable in terms of actually learning C++ and getting a descent grade. As he says, scoring 55% above on his tests is respectable, and almost half of the class gets A or A-. With that being said, don't panic before the final and just try your best.
Recommend taking 10B with Mike than with other professors.

By far the hardest class I took last quarter. The homework assignments take a total of 5-10 hours for most people to complete, and the exams are brutal. The class average for both the midterm and final are roughly 40%, but that equates to roughly a high B in the class. Participation is mandatory, since he has participation questions in discussion and lecture. He's pretty friendly and wants you to do well, on top of being a good professor, it's just that his exams and homework are so hard that it will most likely take up most of your time.

I normally give longer bruinwalk reviews, but he gives most of the info on this class online at: http://www.math.ucla.edu/~mikel/teaching/pic10b/

Check the PDF's titled "Course Details" and "On course difficulty, grading practices, etc." for information on the class.

This class was THE most tiring, time consuming class of the quarter and also the cause of my sleep-deprivation. Mike expects you to have a solid foundation of C++ concepts (which I didn't really have) entering the class, where the topics he teaches build on one another from that base. He was very intimidating during the first few lectures, and a good portion of students ended up dropping the class after the first week. Each of his lecture slides have at least 100 slides each (some up to 200+), with each slide jam-packed with words. It is crucial that you go back and read the slides yourself/review or you WILL fall behind and get lost in the class VERY quickly. Try to attend lectures because he does do in-class participation questions often that count for points. There are nine homework assignments total that increase in difficulty and he drops your two lowest homework scores. Doing the homework is probably the most time consuming but he also bases his midterms and finals off of them so it's best to try and understand how to do them - form a study group because it will be torture if you do it yourself. As long as you put in the effort and do all the work, you can survive but this class will require you to put in A LOT of your time and hard work.

PiC10B is so hard. This professor is so hard. So here is a mini-guide to maybe help you get through this class if you ever stuck with Lindstrom. Lindstrom lectures so fast, you won't have time to write down everything from his slides if you're a handwritten-notetaker. His slides are full of words, like almost actual sentences, so don't even try to write your notes by hand - it'll be best to print out the slides and write on them or to use digital note-taking for those of you with ipads and apple pens and stuff. When he posts his slides it is best to read everything in the slides before going to lecture in order to understand better and to have questions ready. Use class time to sit and listen and understand the coding theory and syntax, and to ask questions. If you fall behind on this, it is very hard to catch up on what he is talking about because everything builds on each other. Homework is hard, but like he says on his grading policy/syllabus, you need at least 3 days to do the hw well. Participation is one of the easiest ways to get the points, so be sure to attend lecture, you never know when he'll pull up a participation question; also, participation questions are used in discussion so be sure to attend discussion. In discussion, the TA will usually give hints on the harder hws, but they don't give out the slides for the discussion, so take pics of the slides. He curves generously, but don't count on it to save your grade - the material is really dense, so be prepared for mental breakdowns throughout the quarter.

hahahha this class was so fucking hard. Mike is incredibly smart like a straight up genius which makes it hard when he’s explaining abstract concepts, of which PIC10B has a lot. There is so much fucking theory and his slides are VERY comprehensive (each topic had about 200 slides). That being said, I’m glad I took his class instead of the other professor’s. Falcon was the other prof and is a much better teacher, but that just means the curve of her class was tougher. By the end of the quarter, this class had 15 people left and the mean and median of the final were both around 45%. I was exactly at the class average for the final. The average for the midterm was around 50% and I got 10% higher than it. So overall, this gave me an A-. I also spaced and forgot to submit the last homework assignment, which is fine since he drops 2 hwks, but it probably would’ve replaced a lower hwk score I got before. Personally, I didn’t find it too difficult to grasp the difficult topics once I got around to studying them, but I did notice other students in the class had a harder time. If you have a solid foundation from PIC10a and think you understand C++ relatively well, this class won’t be impossible. It was still pretty difficult for my friends in Falcon’s class to understand the topics, and they probably learned much faster than my class did, but the curve helped me get a higher grade than I think I would’ve in Falcon’s.