Pray to the bald Norwegian god and the blop blop guy and you will do fine

As someone who has never coded before I thought Howard did a great job. Honestly all the assignments (except maybe for the third project) were really reasonable, including the tests. Howard is kind and helpful and will respond to the discussion forums and help you in office hours if you go. It wasn’t difficult to succeed in the class if you just manage your time wisely and go over notes and worksheets before tests. The only gripe I have is that the project descriptions were often lacking, so you kind of have to keep checking back to make sure you’re understanding what he wants correctly. But all that being said I would recommend Howard to anyone that needs to take CS 31. Solid teacher and overall nice guy.

---Lecture: Stahl's lectures were pretty good, but it is hard to stay engaged the whole time. His slides are also not super useful.

---Professor: Stahl is super nice and approachable. He is also quite understanding. I did a project wrong and got a 0, but he was nice enough to let me submit it again.

---Projects: The projects are reasonable but can be challenging if you don't understand the information well. They are also graded pretty fairly.

---Exams: His midterm and final were both pretty challenging if you enter his class with no coding experience. If you did code before it should be a breeze. You do need to understand the material quite well.

---Tips: There are a TON of outside resources to learn C++, and I recommend that over relying on lecture (such as youtube). Professor Carey Nachenberg has public power point slides for cs31 that help a lot. Go to office hours for all your projects: you'll save so much time compared to trying to struggle through them on your own.

Stahl is a good professor, and the class shouldn't be too difficult (especially if you've had any prior exposure to computer science). The projects are super manageable and he gives you a Codeboard for each, so testing them is made pretty easy. The midterm and final aren't too bad – they test a combination of syntax understanding as well as broader code-writing. Lectures are generally pretty decent, although Stahl will often get stuck on topics and ramble for far longer than is necessary (this may also just be a symptom of 2 hour lectures).
Overall, I would definitely recommend the class, even if this is your first experience with computer science.

The projects we had were pretty easy, and the midterm was fair. The lectures are kinda slow, but clear and easy to understand. My only complaint is that the specs for the projects weren't the most accurate and would regularly get updated throughout the week as people asked for clarifications. Overall a good experience!

if you want to learn a new language (other than c++) take this guys class.

you will learn to walk the arrow, get the lollipop, pray to the bald Norwegian guy, and blop the blop blops,

absolutely automagical.

cout << the_best_professor_ever;

"Howard Stahl"

He needs a 5.0 on this site, anyone who doesn't leave a 5.0 is just straight up wrong because I have never had such a laidback legend like Howard in my life. I want to get lunch with him and have him tell me stories about his dog Pixie and airplane disasters as I slowly drift off into sleep land. He makes coding simple and fun, and I miss him already :(

Howard is the fucking awesome. He is super responsive and extremely helpful with email. He is an awesomely funny lecturer I looked forward to going to class. On top of enjoying his presence his instruction of c++ and other topics is super clear and the projects were super creative and fun and relevant to what we learned in class. I love Howard. He is a human being.

Howard explains clearly about concept in C++ and he is very nice! His teaching of CS31 can be easily understood by students who are new to programming. Though the workload of projects (one every week) is a little bit heavy, it can be handled well if you think and design your program carefully.

No idea why Howard is so underrated at just 3.5 in Bruinwalk, he deserves much more especially after the course has been transformed into Online Asynchronous instruction. Trust me, although CS31 is not the easiest course available under the sun (its workload depends on what kind of bugs you happen to run into), Howard is one of the best teachers you can have to bring you into the world of coding. Very humble guy who explains the otherwise tricky concepts in very relatable ways.

For people considering a CS related major or just thinking of picking up a new skill, highly recommend Howard's CS31 class. You will end up doing fine because help is available almost every day of the week with Office Hours scheduled on the days when there is no lecture or discussion and the quality of Office Hours sessions are awesome. Also, no worries if you are new to coding; because if I, a freshman with no prior coding experience who absolutely struggles with Math and Physics thinking in High School, turned out to do fine in this course, so can you too!