I actually dropped this class halfway through the quarter, but I thought to provide some comments. I received a very very low score on my project 2 that would make it impossible for me to succeed in this class. because I missed three hyphens. That's probably due to my own issue, but I thought there's no need to make people like me who received low scores feel worse --- the following are from the email the professor sent us: it may not be because of a lack of understanding of C++, but something more fundamental: You ignored
repeated admonitions in the spec and in class to avoid specific foolish
mistakes, yet you made them anyway. Whatever your field of study is, you
must fix this characteristic about yourself. No employer would dare hire
someone who ignores repeated spoken and written directives: You'd pose a
risk to the safety of yourself and others if you ignore safety rules, a
risk to the financial health of the company if you ignore legal regulations,
and a drain on productivity if your ignoring specifications causes you or
others to devote more time later on to correct your mistakes.

this class has good material, and smallberg is an efficient professor
but i felt the grading and workload of this class was highly unnecessary. projects are heavily long and inconsiderate of time of students, and while i see how it lets practice with some concepts, it gets really repetitive (do i really need 5 classes for same style of objects)
i think the tests were nice and a much better measure of how well somebody understood the concept, especially with how some people "collaborate" too much, but tests are a level playing field. this class should grade more based on tests and reduce project workload.

If your correctness score is 60 or below, it may not be because of a lack
of understanding of C++, but something more fundamental: You chose to
ignore repeated admonitions in the spec and in class to avoid specific
foolish mistakes, yet you made them anyway. Whatever your field of study
is, you should work to fix whatever caused you to do this. No employer
would dare hire someone who ignores repeated spoken and written directives:
You'd pose a risk to the safety of yourself and others if you ignore safety
rules, a risk to the financial health of the company if you ignore legal
regulations, and a drain on productivity if your ignoring specifications
causes you or others to devote more time later on to correct your mistakes.

This class took up my whole quarter. The last half of the quarter the projects get crazy time consuming. It seemed like we were always doing a project or studying for an exam, there wasnt a time where I wasnt doing CS32. Smallberg definitely knows a lot about CS, but his lectures are filled with trivia about non-CS topics and him explaining what not to do. Whenever I went to lecture everyone was asleep or not paying attention and online shopping. We got behind in lecture, meaning for nearly all of the projects and homework assignments we were using topics that hadn't been talked about in class. Fortunately, Professor Nachenberg has slides that are extremely helpful, which is what my friends and I used to learn the material. There are LA workshops once a week usually which can be helpful depending on the LAs teaching. TA discussion section is also helpful (my TA taught us a lot clearer than the professor), but that depends on your TA. Be prepared to do a lot of self-study to get the concepts and have very little time to study for exams ( you usually have a project due the day before an exam). However, this is an extremely important class for CS so be sure to take it during a quarter where you can put all of your time into it!

It's Smallberg. Who else would you do CS31 with?
He blessed my quarter.

Overall manageable class. Start projects early, especially Project 3 and Project 4, and you will find them fun instead of stressful. Reach out to peers or TAs if you need help

Kinda boring since lectures are prerecorded but class is chill if you have prior cs experience. Smallberg trolls quite a bit tho.

Dr. Smallberg is a great professor but his online lectures (recorded) are long and dull (with the exception of his monkey and his clumsiness). If you intend to get through the lecture without falling asleep watch the video at 2x speed. Also refer to Nachenberg's slides where appropriate; they help a lot!

In this class, Smallberg builds very good intuition, as he will go on and on for a long time for why a certain algorithm/practice is incorrect, before finally showing the correct one. While I hated this method of teaching while I took the class, looking back, it helped me out a lot. Smallberg is also a walking C++ dictionary, as he was good at answering any question about C++ syntax.

There are 4 Projects and 5 Homeworks in this class. The homeworks were as hard as CS31 projects, while projects were longer (except for Project 1 and Project 4). Project 3 is the most brutal one, as he gives you two weeks to work on it. We had the Battleship project. I procrastinated the first week (bad idea), which forced me to work A LOT in the second week. Out of the last 48 hours before it was due, I spent 14 hours working on the project. Recommendation: do not procrastinate on projects.

For this class, use Smallberg's lectures to learn, and then Nachenberg's slides to review. It will help in the long run! Overall, in hindsight, I found this class to be more fun than CS31 and CS33; discussing edge cases and creating test cases with others was the most fun part of the projects.

Favorite project: Super Peach Sisters, hands down. It's so fun doing an actual graphical CS project for a change.