If this is your first time learning coding, you are definitely screwed. The professor won't respond to your emails and won't answer your questions on Piazza (ironically, he encourages students to use this rather than email). You’ve got to learn the whole thing by yourself, which takes a lot of time. I have some coding experience from high school (Java), but still struggled with classes in C++ , which felt kind of different from Java.

Some people might say this class is an easy A, but this doesn’t include you.

TLDR: Chill class if you had previous coding experience with APCSA or similar, but may take more effort if new to coding. Lots of extra credit.

This class was pretty chill I would say. Lectures are optional, he posts slides, every lecture is recorded and posted on canvas. His lectures were fine but I ended up skipping all of them after Week 3 except for midterm and final review lectures which were helpful. I also skipped most of my discussion sections but my TA was really nice, super knowledgeable about the course, each week they reviewed course material from the presentations and had a short worksheet of conceptual and technical questions to work on, with solutions posted later.

Grading:
Non-graded Online Checkpoints (5%)
Projects (40%)
Midterm (20%)
Final (35%)

The non-graded quizzes eventually stopped after three of them, one each week, I'm not too sure why but they were just some practice multiple-choice testing the content taught in lecture. 6 projects, each of them were fine, just triple-check that you submit the project in the exact format and follow the instructions exactly as told or else you will get many points taken off. Ask any questions you have on Piazza or your TA to make sure no mishaps happen. The midterm was a mix of multiple choice, fill in the blank, and coding questions taken online during lecture (so 1 hr 50 minutes long but its supposed to take around 1.5 hours). 1 page cheat sheet front+back. One important thing to note is that one of the coding questions was word for word the same question as the online practice midterm coding question. The final was a similar format to the midterm, with a time limit of two hours (cut down from the usual 3 hour length of a final), online. 2 pages cheat sheet front+back. No practice final beforehand though.

Extra credit: Doing the LA feedback surveys for the mid-quarter and end-of-quarter gave 5 extra points to be added to the midterm and final respectively, and since both midterm and final are out of 100 points, it was very nice. There was a 20 minute online extra credit quiz on pointers around week 7-8 lecture time that was 10 points, however many points you got would be added to your midterm score. You just had to be in the lecture room in-person and turn in your 1-page cheat sheet.

Overall get solid grades on the projects, make sure to understand concepts thoroughly for exams, and practice simple coding questions too (or just put code on your cheat sheet like I did). Huang can be a funny guy sometimes too so his lectures aren't very boring.

太有考试了，最后一节课的一个小点考十分 一整个vector就考一个2分的填空，上课梦到什么说什么，板书像听课睡着时写的鬼画符。如果你是数学专业，去上PIC10A吧

Hi, just coming on you to affirm what others are saying. If you got an A in this class, good for you, but please do not lead people astray. This class is insanely easy. I have loads of coding experience and in comp sci, yet received a 71% on the midterm which tanked my grade. He didnt curve it even though the average was a 74% and despite getting almost everything correct, my code didnt compile because of minor errors and I was marked down 30%. Its honestly ridiculous. He is a nice enough guy and a decent lecturer, not as good as any other that teaches 31, but his grading policies are unfair and cryptic. on top of this, the projects are relatively easy as long as you put in the work, but if you so long as put an extra space before the output and the specs said otherwise, you will recieve a 0, and if the rest of the class did fine, you will be screwed and will not do well in this class. He doesnt care what you say to him, so dont bother emailing or seeing him in person, and if you do not have experience getting programs to work first try for hours upon hours of leetcode, avoid him at all costs because his tests are not fair. You will leave the room feeling confident as every and the next week you will bomb, it doesnt matter how prepared you feel, which just leaves you asking what you are even supposed to do next time. For the final, he doesnt give you youre grade to it but rather adds a little suspense so that when you open your transcript down the line, you just end up with a few letter grades lower when you also thought that the final was light. Takeaway: there is nothing you can do in this class to optimize your grades, and you will have to get insanely lucky that you dont make any MINISCULE mistakes, that the name of the game. He is just so rigid in his ways and not willing to listen to the students even if we all despise his grading scemes. Please avoid if possible, I tend to have good opinions on most professors if they are reasonable, but he is not.

vague instructions and unreasonable marking scheme

Easy A tbh

It was quite difficult to hear the professor at times because the professor didn't use a microphone. I also was very lost when the professor would pull up code and start going through it very quickly. I think I would've benefitted more from having the professor write the code with us rather than throw a piece of code onto the projector and then scroll through it quickly.

The professor would almost always give us extensions on the project (I suspect to get people to work on it before the original deadline so that they're not scrambling later on) and everyone would clap ...

For what it's worth, I think consider taking the other professor because this may be an "easy A" which it wasn't because I still got a B+, but you won't learn much. I struggled in CS32 because I barely learned anything in this class. Definitely use your resources for this class and start the projects early. Office Hours and the UPE review sessions are a lifesaver.

The homework assignments make up 80% of the grade and the final is worth 20% of the grade. Each homework assignment reflects the lecture material. There is some Python and SQL coding, which I learned a lot from! Overall, the professor is very passionate about this subject and regularly responded via email for help with the homework assignments.

If you have no prior coding experience, I would suggest not to take CS 31 with Huang if you have any other options. I took him for winter, but had to drop week 9 because I had no fucking clue what was going on in class. He stutters a lot and can barely get out a coherent sentence. He's difficult to understand and he often leaves out little details that would make the material easier to understand. He's a bit all over the place. As I write this, I'm currently taking CS 31 with Stahl over the summer and he has been great. 10x better than Huang. Anyway, Huang just isn't a great lecturer. You can tell he likes teaching the class and is passionate about CS in general, but he just isn't an effective lecturer.

Okay so as someone who has done a year of high school coding Java this class was cake. It was a bit of a learning curve with C++ but they are very similar. I barely had to attend lectures/discussions except for in the beginning. However, I agree with another review I saw that if you have never coded before Huang is a little challenging. I would definitely utilize discussion time as mine was pretty much 2 hours of office hours. You can get plenty of help in this class especially since piazza is available and people respond super quick. Huang also realized people were struggling with grades at some point and added extra credit quizzes and extra points to the final and also moved our midterm online bc we wanted it to be. He cares a lot about cs and his students just really make sure u attend lectures and utilize discussions and piazza for project help if you have never coded before!