I was kinda afraid of the rating on bruin walk at first, but decided to attend the lectures to see how it was. After the first few lectures, I absolutely fell in love with logical designs and all the fun analysis.

Professor Mani gives amazing lectures, and you MUST attend all of them to make sense of the materials. The discussion was also invaluable and helped me so much in gaining solid understanding in practice questions. All lectures and discussions are recorded, well organized under piazza resource tab, and the assignments as well. Prof and TAs are almost 24/7 monitoring piazza, and I remember getting a reply at 2am right after sending my question LMAO. You really have to learn to access all the resources to do good in this class.

the rubric is as follows:
4 problem sets (google collab, short answer, auto graded): 20%
2 Design Assignments (logism design, autograded): 25%
2 Quizzes (online, synchronous, you can do it in your dorm, open book/LLM): 25%
Final (online, synchronous, you can do it in your dorm, open book/LLM): 26%
Discussion participation: 4%

I think the most challenging is the 1st PSET (took me 7 hours) because you have to get used to the materials and the format, as well as the last design assignment (took me 20 hours, there are points assigned for comparatively lower cost of design too). Also, if you have anxiety issue like me, there are explanation sections after each problem in the PSETs and Quizzes/Final, but don't fill all of them in exams because you will run out of time. Once you feel comfortable, you can also skip them for the PSETs on the questions you feel confident about. PSETs can be submitted for 3 times, 1 time you will see if your submission follows format requirements, the last 2 gives you score, so you actually get 1 extra shot to correct your wrong answers (sometimes prof realize the auto grader answer was wrong and change answer, which may lower your grade a bit, but it really doesn't matter that much if you are in a good shape for everything else). For exams, you can submit as many times as you wish, and it only tells you if your formatting is correct, not points/correctness given until after the exam.

I think I really enjoyed the Design Assignemnts, though sitting in the study connecting wires for 8 hours straight wasn't the more pleasant thing my back and arms have experienced. I'm really proud of the optimization I did for my DA2 (still some genius in class easily got full credit with 1500+ less area cost than all of us. There are geniuses out there, and I'm just gonna chill as long as my design works lmao.)

I think the key to this class is to start early for projects and stay on track. Office hours also helped a lot too, so go visit the professor if you have any concerns or conceptual questions, he will be happy to explain things in class again as long as you think before asking and understand the basic concepts.

Again, I understand why people are so afraid because of the autograder, but you will learn your grade one way or another, eventually. Just be conscious of what your are learning, always ask questions and answer them in lecture/piazza once you meet any confusion, and you will be happy that you took this class.

Follow what all of the other reviews have said. Please spare yourself your mental health and do not take this professor for this class. For every course I’ve taken during my two years at UCLA, I’ve felt like it was possible to get an A if you worked hard, studied, and mastered the material. Not this one.
It feels like you are pretty much left on your own for this course. Very little guidance, and the assignments and exams are often vague and feel more like an assessment of whether you’re on the same wavelength as the professor. If you don’t understand a question, expect to get a 0 from the autograder. From this standpoint, the assignments often felt like a coinflip. The professor also came off as pretty rude on Piazza when people just wanted clarification on assignments.

This has got to be the worst professor I've ever had. Just like many of you reading this review, when I was picking professors I thought to myself, "Hey, it can't be that bad, I'll be able to survive". Absolutely not. I will admit that his tests really aren't that hard, I was consistently scoring 90%+, but guess what, he just isn't respectful at all. Although, I will guarantee you this: on the test, he gives you almost no time. The questions are doable given a 2-3hour time period, but he gives you damn near 1 hour to solve ~20 subproblems. This is quite literally impossible for anyone, and without the curve, I would've been scoring F's. Degrading his students on Piazza, implying to his students that they are illiterate and that "they don't understand english", he is not suited to be a professor. His design assignments in my opinion are quite fun, but as a usual CS class, he doesn't provide any partial. However, fun doesn't mean good. His design assignments are so badly worded and when you ask him to clarify on Piazza, he almost as if hits you with a "You don't understand english huh?". When asking TA's about his intention behind some points in the Design Assignment, they literally didn't know either, and accepted that Mani is a trash professor. EVEN HIS TA'S AGREE HE IS TERRIBLE. Design assignments also take a long time and are extremely specific. It's almost as if he doesn't want you to learn the material realistically, but rather wants you to do something in an extremely outdated method. He's better off sticking as a researcher rather than professor. He hasn't been taught etiquette and acts idiotically from the 1700s. I sometimes wonder how he became a professor given his lack of respect towards others and ignorance towards them. He acts almost as if he is a god and we should be worshipping him. Other than that, don't even go to his lectures, I have no idea how anyone learns from them. If it were me, I would say design the things he talks about in Logism yourself. That way, you really understand what is going on, especially since he loves to overcomplicate things.

The professor had to teach in pretty difficult circumstances so I think a lot of the criticism given might be unwarranted.

The class was tough. The homework were challenging. The exams were online and were very difficult.

I really liked the design assignments and wished there were more of them, However, the professor decided to give a final this year instead of a take home design assignment.

If there was one thing I think I would change about this class is I would've preferred a design assignment over a final. I think it would've been a more meaningful challenge and I would've probably had a deeper appreciation of some of the design patterns and algorithms discussed in class.

Overall this class is not for the faint of heart. All of the averages on exams were consistently below 50%.

Worst teacher imaginable. His lectures were two hours long twice a week and paying attention was the impossible. The content for the first 6 weeks were light but Mani somehow made it confusing. The content at the end of the quarter was significantly harder and Mani did not do any better at teaching. Discussion assignments are free, problem sets are manageable, design assignments are tedious, and quizzes and finals are terrible. They are rushed and designed to do poorly on. Mani is a rude teacher who responds to student questions in demeaning ways rather than being helpful. He is never wrong so its your fault for having bad reading comprehension skills.