Super cool professor and very active on Piazza. Mostly teaches in Winter.

The difference in what I retained before the midterm and what I retained after the midterm is day and night. I was able to remember most of the pre-midterm material very easily but after the midterm, the pace picked up heavily and a lot of material got completely lost on me. Thankfully, there is more than enough extra credit on projects and on tests that is available to still get a great grade in the class while still missing a few items on the final.

I took CS33 with professor Nowatzki in Winter 2017. Back in then it was his first time teaching but I enjoyed his class so much. This is probably the most fundamental undergrad CS course, and I really benefit a lot from his lectures. Professor Nowatzki is one of the greatest professors in CS department. His lectures are concise and straightforward. Projects are not hard at all if you follow the instructions (and he gives extra credit as well). Tests are easy and fair. Overall this is a great class with generous curve and grading scheme, and you would never regret taking CS33 with him. I would recommend everyone to take his class.

He is one of the nicest CS professors you can ever hope for. He gives reasonable mdt and finals with practice exams. The projects are pretty hard but he gives plenty of time with extra credits. He is very active on Piazza where you can ask him anything from CS-related questions to "Are you a junkrat main". Take him as your CS33 Professor at all cost(He only teaches in winter).

Very active professor on Piazza

Prof. Nowatzki is one of those teachers that obviously cares about student learning. He's readily available to answer student questions, is very active on the Piazza forum with thoughtful responses and some funny jokes, and has an engaging lecture style. The midterm and final are straightforward, and Nowatzki provides his midterms and finals from previous years as well as a Google Drive of study material for you to practice. The projects are all pretty manageable except for the malloc lab, which was 30 hours of stepping through GDB while sobbing. That being said, I got a C on that lab but an A+ in the class, so don't sweat it too much. My TA was also SUPER helpful. If you can, definitely take Yugo Watanabe's discussion section! 10/10 one of the best TAs at UCLA. Overall, it's not difficult to get an A as long as you actually pay attention in class and clutch on the final. Would take again with this professor!

Prof Nowatzki is pretty amazing overall. His shortcomings are that his lecture slides can be confusing and his lecturing style sometimes boring (like many people too deep in CS, he can lose sight of what it's like learning that material for the first time). His advantages are what makes this of the most enjoyable classes I've had at UCLA: extremely active on Piazza, super nice attitude (very pleasant office hours), wacky sense of humour (makes every project goofy, jokes in slides, posted funny finals answers as his last piazza message), lots of practice material for exams. I found it really worthwhile to go to two discussions since my TA (shoutout to Atefeh) had really good summary slides and Yugo Wantanabe (the legend himself) was 50% of the reason i understood anything at all in the class. TLDR: content can be hard but prof w great attitude plus helpful TA outweigh that.

I didn't really like the presentation of the lectures: very much reading off the slides although with helpful explanations. The slides, I hate to say it, use one (1) boring font (Calibri) and have a lot of words on each. I do wish I paid more attention or tried harder to in class. Reading the slides on time and carefully while using the textbook as a complement will help a lot in this class. Start your labs early. The malloc lab is tricky. I scored less than 40/100 for malloc and didn't turn in the thread lab, but did well on the tests which balanced out. Know your strengths: taking the exams (which were open book this quarter), or doing the lab exercises. If you get the textbook in a physical copy which you can bring to the exam, know how to use the contents page and index. I really liked the trigger warning on zombies, although I didn't need it.

the professor is really nice but trying to understand lecture off slides is pretty difficult and he goes really fast. I suppose it would've been better if I had read the book before lecture but the book is so dense and there's so much to read...
definitely going to discussion under yugo was super helpful because he would take the time to explain things, go over examples and draw on the board and talk to us rather than going off slides.
you're given a lot of time to work on the labs and the prof is really nice and occasionally trolls you... i still ... i can't... thank you piazza

Conceptually, the material in CS33 was a lot tougher compared to CS31 and CS32. However, Tony made the class really enjoyable. He's one of the nicest professors I've ever had at UCLA and would occasionally post memes/troll on Piazza. He was also super helpful in office hours and was really receptive to questions as a whole. Because of this, I actually ended up enjoying my experience in CS33. I personally struggled to understand the lectures because the material was sometimes too deep for me, but after going to discussion and reading the textbook, things seemed to slow down. 10/10 recommend going to discussion (especially Yugo's) would recommend taking this class with Tony.