Huang is the best! He's an excellent professor with engaging lectures and lots of experience in the field (IBM executive). When I took this class, it was very very easy. There's a midterm, a final, and 7 projects. The projects are mostly very straightforward, except for the 3rd, which was much more complex than the others. He does have a bit of an accent, but he's easy to understand after a couple days.

I really like professor Huang. I think he takes a great approach to teaching an introductory computer science, coming from somebody with no experience. He is, however, very intelligent which makes it difficult to bring simple questions to class because he can't simplify them. The tests and projects are challenging, but if you have good time management skills you will be fine. This is not work that can be done a few days before the deadline.

Listen, if you don't have coding experience do not take this class. All the good things you're hearing about Huang are from people who already know how to code. I have never coded before and Huang made this class so unnecessarily stressful and difficult. His lectures were extremely boring, hard to follow, and plain unhelpful. He clearly did not know how to teach coding at a beginner level. His tests aren't hard but he doesn't teach well enough for the content that is on them. The midterm was taken during week 4 or 5 and wasn't graded until week NINE. And even then some people's tests weren't even fully graded. I got a C- on the midterm which was around the average which was so nerve wracking and stressful since the final was two weeks later. Luckily he offered an extra credit quiz for up to 12 points on the midterm which alleviated some stress. The only reason I ended with an A is because we were allowed a cheat sheet on the final and I had exactly what was on the final and exactly an all-or-nothing 10 point extra credit question written on my cheat sheet so I ended up getting a 102 on the final. As for projects, his specs are actually TERRIBLE. He is so bad at explaining what he wants which results in the project averages to sometime be in the 70s and 80s. But again, if you have done programming before you will get an A, but if not it will be unnecessarily stressful.

I took this class after receiving a recommendation from one of my CS major friends. Although I was very intimidated by the fact that this class is taught in C++, Dr. Huang helped eliminate some of my worries. I agree with the fact that he is super kind and knowledgeable in CS as a whole, but what some users failed to mention is that he sometimes has poor communication. Dr. Huang certainly does his best to be accommodating to students, but depending on what else he has going on in his life, he will sometimes take weeks to respond to emails. Although he can take a while to respond, he has always resolved my issues and concerns regarding the course. All in all, I highly recommend Dr. Huang!

i took this class as a non-STEM major so take this review with a grain of salt. Professor Huang is a great person, but he sucks at lecturing. what i mean is that he is very accommodating to students' opinions but most of the time, i feel like i am self-studying for the projects and exams. but i do think that's how it should be at UCLA regardless of what class you're taking. the TA's and LA's weren't that great either because i would ask them a couple questions regarding code and they would reply with a generic answer. overall, a pretty mid experience with this class.

This class was a joke, two lectures form 4-5:50 on Monday and Wednesday where he would sit in the front of the class and talk without a microphone to 150+ ppl(the first week there were like 200-250 ppl). If you were sat anywhere behind the 7/8th row, you had no chance of following the lecture. Lecture was not very useful but he uploaded videos that clarified the concepts on bruin learn. I have to add that this class only has one midterm that is 25% of your grade (that we took week 4) so if you do badly on that you're cooked. It's standard in the COM SCI department (i think?- most professors do it anyway) that your project score is capped by the mean of the midterm and final +30 points (so if you get a 50 and a 60, your project score is out of 75% not 100%), but having one midterm really screwed me over. I got a 90 on the final and a 98 on the projects (which imo where WAY easier than they should have been), but I hadn't quite grasped the concepts of project 3 when we did the midterm (midterm was on Wednesday and project 3 was due on saturday) so I went in and bombed it because 40% of our grade was about loops. I got a 40% on my midterm (it was graded week 8). This was obviously my own fault but I felt like they were grading unecessarily harshly. Also it was online so there was definitely cheating (it was on respondus lockdown browser though). He did give us an extra credit quiz which increased our grade by 12%. I got an extra 8.6% because of it, which was the difference between a C+ and a B- for me and I am very glad he did that. But he made it seem as tho u were guaranteed a 100% if you did it and it was definitely not like that. It was easy enough though. Overall, I think you should take another proffeser but if you gotta take Huang, just keep in mind that you're going to have to put in a lot of outside effort (W3schools, LearnCpp and I recommend C++ for beginners by Dr Kung-Hua Chang (this book SAVED me for the final)). He was really helpful during OH and piazza was really helpful (although some of the student's questions confused me more than helped me), and also my TA and LA were great.