Love Bruce!! Super nice with grades and gave us an extra credit quiz worth 30 points. Can tell he is really passionate about computer science and tries really hard to help with all questions that come up. Something new for this quarter was that our 7th project was a open-ended design your own type project which I thought was really nice (adding on to/based on project 6). Overall a super nice professor and would definitely recommend taking CS31 with him over any other professor.
Also discussions aren't mandatory but I would recommend doing the optional worksheets as they are really useful in solidifying your understanding of the concepts.

Professor Huang is a great professor and I would highly recommend taking his course. Throughout the quarter, it was very clear to me that he cares a lot about teaching and the quality of the content that he puts out. His lectures and slides are easy to understand and he's extremely accommodating and willing to help out his students. In addition, there were a ton of useful resources available. In terms of how the course was constructed, the exams and projects were fair and the course ran smoothly!

Huang's an energetic professor who explains things well and evidently cares a lot about his students. He was super understanding with misunderstandings in CCLE and would do his best to clarify things through email or on Piazza. Would recommend if he teaches again

Huang is an okay lecturer. BUT his tests are super easy. He always puts questions from his practice midterms/finals. I don't like C++ a lot, and had no experience with it (I have used Python) going into this class, but it was absolutely manageable. You also learn well, and he's definitely better than taking this class with Smallberg.

Overall a fine time in Bruce Huang's class(CS32 not CS31). As someone non-CS , I still found the lectures somewhat engaging. Checkpoints and projects were easy. He realized most of us are non-CS so he was very accommodating. Tests were very fair. Offers a lot of extra credit. If you are CS and want to learn the most without caring about your grade, take this class with CS majors winter or with Smallberg. If you want an easier introduction to the topics and want the better grade, definitely take Professor Huang.

This is a review for CS 32 b/c I can't find it listed. I felt like Huang didn't put any effort into the class whatsoever, and it really showed as lectures, projects, and exams all felt kinda disconnected and covered different topics. He uses Nachenberg's slides, which is probably the only good thing about this class. Project specs were really vague and it was really difficult to decipher what he wanted us to to in them: oftentimes it'd be skeleton code provided, and commented "to do" sections that had really vague descriptions as to what was to be implemented. Exams oftentimes had questions he never covered in class, and when we brought it up to him that these questions weren't covered, he deflected and said that "the questions were randomized from a test bank," which I felt really disheartened to hear as a student.

*I'm writing this review to counter the one posted on August 23, 2025, for the Summer 2025 COM SCI 32 course, as my experience was very different.

I found that the project specifications were not "extremely vague" but concise and clear. Asking or reading clarifying questions on Piazza was not a problem for me because Professor Huang would respond very quickly (Average response time according to Piazza was only 2 hours). My biggest problem with Piazza was seeing repeat questions from students cluttering the feed, questions that the professor had already answered in older posts.

Regarding the critical post on Piazza, the claim that Professor Huang "never EVER responds to emails" is false. He has replied to all of my emails and regrade requests. Also, I re-checked the syllabus, and the professor has not violated any deadlines.

Professor Huang was extremely accommodating and thoughtful, especially to the significant number of non-engineering and computer science students taking the course this summer. It was therefore disappointing to see the lack of courtesy and sense of entitlement among my peers on Piazza. Let us treat our professors with respect, not only because of their title, but also because of their humanity. I am grateful to Professor Huang for teaching this class.

*Note: this is in regards to CS 32, NOT CS 31
There was no option to rate this professor in terms of the CS 32 course.

Summer 2025 CS32 was an online, asynchronous course with 2 exams, 4 projects, and some checkpoints (homework graded by correctness).

Firstly, the lectures are long and agonizingly dull. The professor does not use his own powerpoint, rather choosing to borrow another professor's and just vaguely reiterate what's on the screen. Many students have opted just to read the slides without listening to the professor.

The lectures themselves are far, far longer than what it would be if they were in done in person or over zoom.

But what's really egregious are the projects. He iterates again and again to read all instructions carefully and that any small errors would take off points. And yet the SPECs (project requirements, expectations, and instructions) are extremely vague, to the point where each project leads to dozens and dozens of follow-up clarifications on Piazza. Fascinatingly, the prof expects us to read each and every one of the questions in Piazza and apply his arbitrary rules before turning the assignment in. He makes no announcement even when multiple people ask the question, and says it was our job to scour all of Piazza instead of actually doing HIS job and clarifying instructions in the specs or in an announcement in the first place.

There was a post on Piazza by students calling out other criticisms, including the "troubling lack of communication with students" (he never EVER responds to emails), "being graded incorrectly by the autograders on checkpoints, despite providing correct or near-identical answers", "fairness and consistency of grading", and not abiding by the syllabus and its deadlines.

IF your only goal with this class is to graduate or to get a grade boost, take it DURING summer, ASYNCHRONOUS, and only if you have some time on your hands.

If your goal includes actually learning the material, applying it later in life, or obtaining a good connection with the professor, don't take it with this guy.

*Disclaimer: this was most likely the first time this professor has taught this course. however it was online, asynchronous, and the material was made easier than CS 32 is supposed to be. also he has had many years of teaching experience, so I'm taking the liberty to be completely transparent, something he has trouble implementing in class.

TLDR: Horrible professor that does not care about your learning experience. Does not do any of the work REQUIRED as a professor and the whole class really hated him, for good reason. Waste of the 1.0 stars that this website forces me to give him.

I wish you luck.

Professor Bruce is the best person you can take CS31 with. He knows his subject well, and even gives out extra credit as well as recorded lectures.

Showing up to class is not mandatory but would still recommend because he's quite funny, love his stories. The project specs are sometimes unclear but still you can go up to him in office hours and he'll respond appropriately. I would recommend religiously attending discussion and doing all the worksheets.
His explanation of pointers and classes was one of the best

TL;DR: If you've ever done anything CS-related, run. If you've never touched CS before, run farther. This class brings you nothing but regret and frustration. I've never seen anyone more idiotic than him, or SPECS more vague than his.
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Taking this class with this professor has been the most frustrating academic experience I’ve had at UCLA. The structural failures of this course span across lecture delivery, project specification, grading fairness, and communication. None of which aligns with the standards of a technical education at a top university.

1. Lecture Content and Course Load
Each week involves an average of 6+ hours of lecture videos posted on YouTube. This is well beyond what’s expected for a summer session class, and nearly double that of other UCLA summer courses I’ve taken. Despite the long runtime, the lectures are shallow. I watched them at 6x speed, but it still resulted in full comprehension, which suggests his material is not dense but meandering. While it could be argued that summer sessions are more compact, this class runs for nine weeks—only one week shorter than a standard quarter. So why is the workload inflated so much when neither the content density nor the course duration justifies it?

2. Project Specifications ("Specs") Are Functionally Useless
The "specs" provided for projects are vague, conceptual summaries. They often omit:
- I/O format
- Edge case behavior
- Sample outputs
- Explicit expected behavior
Instead, students are expected to reverse-engineer the actual grading criteria by monitoring Piazza, where clarification only emerges if and when someone asks the right question. This process:
- Rewards students who happened to see one buried Piazza thread.
- Punishes students who followed the spec as written.
- Forces everyone to trawl through dozens of unrelated posts to extract core requirements.
When asked for clarification on valid edge cases, the professor sometimes responds with “up to your design,” yet still deducts points based on rigid, undisclosed expectations. The actual grading rubric is not provided, only partially inferred through scattered instructor comments on Piazza. This violates principles of transparency and consistency. While it’s fair not to reveal exact test cases, a proper spec must clearly define how programs will be evaluated and what constitutes correctness.

3. Critical Announcements Are Not Made Through Formal Channels
Key updates (e.g., extra credit opportunities or spec clarifications) were only posted on Piazza, with no email, no BruinLearn post, no formal notification. Piazza is an informal discussion forum. Using it as the sole source for official course communication is unacceptable and unprofessional.

4. Pattern of Negligence Across Multiple Quarters
This is not a one-time issue. I’ve taken two courses with this professor due to scheduling constraints, and both suffered the same structural failures. No improvements were made, and the first class didn't even offer an evaluation form, suggesting avoidance of accountability.

Conclusion:
While I did learn from the assignments, but despite of the instruction, not because of it. This class fails pedagogically, procedurally, and professionally. Unless significant reform is implemented, this instructor should not continue teaching core undergraduate courses. The risk to student experience and academic integrity is too high. The systemic issues described above severly undermine educational quality, fairness, and UCLA’s academic reputation.