Workload, as stated by everyone before, is horrendous. Like I honestly don't know what was Eggert thinking(I still to this day have never seen the man because TA's do everything for 35L), so much is packed into each assignment and there is very little guidance on how to start it. Assignment 1 is an absolute pain. Assignment 2 is a maze of hieroglyphs that will take you hours to do, and there are many complaints to be said about other assignments. I did learn a lot, however, and there's the useful stuff like emacs, git, ssh, threading, but there is also the concepts that are put in there just because Eggert made them so he wants to show off(be ready for GNU Shuf), and are of zero practical use. But you will learn like 5 or 6 new things every assignment and the workload is insane for the class.

The final my quarter was also the first time it was a cumulative final for the entire class(all sections), very hard and sort of confusing, hopefully, they don't repeat it in later years, but Eggert is Eggert so you never know.

The saving grace of this class is by random chance, and I mean TA's. If you get a good TA as I did, who can articulate well and is helpful and actually cares, then you will be a bit better off because they will help you with the assignment(lab and hw) in the slides and all that, but if you get a TA who only cares about the stipend for his tuition, then you are in deep doo doo and I recommend going to other TA's office hours to get help.

There are two parts to this class: the team project, and the tests (midterm and final)

The tests focus on theory, which you get by going to lecture and reading the book. If you do one, you don't really need the other one, in my opinion. Eggert is a great lecturer and his test was incredibly easy for me. It is more North-campusy, meaning the questions are open-ended. Just show you know the material decently well and argue your point. I got a 91% on the midterm (studied for 1 hour, but I did the readings and went to lecture), but the average was around 75!!! I guess most CS people can't handle open-ended questions....

The team project is where you put theory into practice. You choose a real-world project that is being offered by a real-world client. It will probably end up taking a lot of time, but you LEARN SOOOOO MUCH. It is the real-deal; a software engineering project from start to finish.

So, Eggert did a great job.

This class is really hard. Eggert's lectures are unclear at some times. Assignments take 15-20 hours per week, 2nd assignment is especially difficult (took me 40 hours even with a ton of TAs help). I did all the assignments legitimately, but it left a sour taste in my mouth knowing that others were using past solutions and getting the same grades as me. Thus, this leads to a more heavy emphasis on doing well on exams. However, exams are also really difficult with an average of roughly ~40%. I got slightly below median on both exams and ended up with a B+. Though to be fair, I only studied for an hour or two for each exam. Because the exam is hard for everyone, you don't have to study as much and still get a median score.

With all this being said though, Eggert has good intentions. I think both the hard assignments and exams defines what UCLA CS education is all about. Finishing an assignment legitimately also gives you a small ego boost. Your GPA might take a hit, but luckily I'm not planning on applying for grad school.

I studied HARD for this class. I almost all the readings, but it didn't really matter because his test questions didn't really relate to the readings. Everyone pretty much gets 100% or near 100% on the projects. I got 100% on the paper and I'm sure it wasn't really graded hard. The tests is what determines your grade pretty much.

Eggert has the most generous grading distribution out of all of the professors who teach this class. However, the variation between the different grades can just be a matter of a few points on an exam and your performance can sometimes be determined by luck. The exams are so hard and do not have to do with any of the readings and go beyond the difficulty of lecture so much, that your grade essentially is determined by your ability to BS and also luck. I got around the bottom 15% on the midterm and then around average for the final.

If you're the type of student who does not really study or spend a lot of time for classes and just wants to pass, then take this class. Your grade will be determined by your BSing skills and luck. If you're the type of student who studies hard, it won't really help you. I would suggest taking another professor.

This TA-taught class is terrible. Straight up. I'm sure some of you have seen the "Bing is banned in China" memes on Reddit if you're taking this class--yeah, that post was for my section. This class is an absolute farce and doesn't even teach you what the syllabus says the labs will cover. Every single lab is confusing and doesn't even begin to care about the student--one of the labs just throws the word "frobnicate" at you like you should know what it means. It's absolutely ridiculous the lack of care this class shows the student. The prerequisites for this class simply list CS31--this is 100% a horrible idea. I took it concurrently with CS32 my winter quarter after 31, and unless you are literally a programming god who already knows the ins and outs of Unix-based environments, Python, C, and C++, there is no way to understand what is happening for the majority of the labs.

The TAs that I had the (dis)pleasure of coming across were a mixed bag, some were nice and helpful and some were just downright rude when you were trying to ask for help. There was also, of course, the incident with the TA who claimed Bing was not banned in China and straight up argued and fought with a group who was presenting about a news article they read that said Bing had been banned in China. I don't know whether or not it affected their grade, but I have a feeling it did.

The class suffers from a lack of cohesion in that every week is a completely unrelated concept compared to previous weeks. There were only ever 2 labs that were useful for further labs, and one of them required you to use a solution from a previous lab--however, the TAs didn't give you a solution for it and you didn't know your grade for the one you turned in, so you just had to work with your prior solution under the assumption that yeah, it probably works...? It took legitimately until the last week before grades were due to get 7 of the 10 lab scores back, meaning going into the final I knew only 15% of my grade (each lab is 5%).

The final was a massacre and Eggert (the first time I'd ever even seen the man) prefaced it with that they designed it to have a median of 50%. Furthermore, this quarter they decided to do a shared final with the other TAs instead of each TA having their own final, so I have no idea how that affected the curve. They didn't release the information, either.

Overall, I hated this class, and the amount of time I spent on it directly impacted by grade in CS32--a C+. My final recommendation here is to take it after CS33 (at the VERY least) and definitely DO NOT take it concurrently with other CS courses.

Hi guys. I am leaving this comment to wish anyone who wil be in this class good luck. I just walked out of the lab after sitting there for 6 hours and completed nothing. The last assignment I have requires a hardware called beagalbone. Well, half of people in my session get worng item and I am one of those idiot.🙂 if you are required to take 35l, PLEASE GET WIRELESS BEAGALBONE GREEN. For this assigment, eggert tells you nothing about what you need to do. Literarily NOTHING. While you are counting on your TA, sadly they don’t seems to know these stuff than you. When I had a problem and ask for help, guess what my TA said? “There are another group having the same problem. Let me go and ask them how did they solve this.” Haha. People argue that this class is just how working likes in the real life. It’s funny how I paid huge tuition just for sitting in a lab using my own Mac to teach myself something super confusing while getting no help from anyone who is supposed to help me and may be receiving my tuition as salary. If you hate this class as well as I do, please please leave your voice. I sincerely hoping my tuition could be used better and someone could take over this class and pay more attention to teaching 35l well.

Rarely do I write BruinWalk reviews, but I thought I'd write this class one just so some student doesn't make the same mistakes I did. Other reviews did a good job describing the workload, all I can say is so long as you are comfortable with Linux you should be fine for the projects, if not I can't speak to that.

However, even still, don't discount this class as an easy A just because you know Linux. I say this because half of your grade is the final exam, and in full honesty how well you do on the final is pretty much determined by the notes you bring with you. In my case I scored in the A-range for all projects with many being full 100's, but my fatal mistake was that I brought TA slides to the final exam. Many students brought copies of some alumni's notes that were easily found online, and after reviewing these notes personally I found that many answers on the final could directly be copied or easily derived just from these notes.

Basically, the class really comes down to the final exam. I still recommend studying and of course doing well on the projects, but if you want an A you'll probably want to bring either a well-crafted cheat sheet of your own or one you can find online to the final.

Eggert is very decent for 111. IMO he's the best 111 lecturer in UCLA. His lectures are engaging and clear (unlike his 33). His 111 exams are not as hard as those from 33.

His final has a lot of multiple choice problems, which are basically quizzes for the assigned reading. I suspect that's why he doesn't have quizzes like other 111 instructors. If you read all required readings from either textbook (I used the online version), those multiple choices are very doable (some questions can be directly found in boldface texts from the book).

Labs won't cover kernel code at all, which is a shame, as USC's OS course has a few kernel assignments.
Lab 0 and 1 are ok since they teach us how to correctly use system calls, etc.
Lab 2 basically reiterates through what we learn in class so we basically didn't learn anything new from Lab 2. I don't know if it's a good thing or a bad thing.
Lab 3 is a total disaster. I learn absolutely ZERO from this lab and it costs me days to finish it. Reiher's spec is also the most unclear I have ever seen. Compared to Reiher's specs, Eggert's 35L specs are pretty amazing.
Lab 4 requires us to buy a $100+ Intel Edison device. From this lab, I learned how to adapt sample code online. I really can't think of anything else I learned.
Unfortunately all 111 labs are the same, so we have to live through that.

oh my god... like the other posts, all I can say is good luck on this final because it is the hardest thing I have ever seen, and if you were able to finish within the 3 hours with decent confidence, then good luck in all your future endeavors. As for the other 99% of us....my god.

LABS/HW: The other posts are pretty spot on--expect to put in a lot of time and thought into the labs each week (the first 4 weeks are god awful, especially week 2's shell scripting, but get much better towards the latter half of the quarter). I can't really say much besides that, some are doable, some aren't without clarification. I have to admit I did find some of the labs enjoyable, and definitely learned a lot about software construction so don't think this class is a complete waste.

FINAL: Basically 50% of your grade is based on this test. 17 pages of the most brutal questions. Yeah, I said 17 pages... Obviously I do not know my score/grade yet writing this post, but after walking out of this shaft of a test I just want to pass the class at this point. Definitely much harder than Winter 2019's final exam, which we got as practice. It's honestly all partial credit at this point. I cannot even give you tips on how to study besides printing out the labs. Our Lab Slides had one keyword without much context, and Eggert writes a whole 10 point question on it. Literal BS you'd probably score higher guessing. Just get through this "3 unit class" and move on to better things. good luck comrades

The syllabus and projects for this class were completely revamped in 2016, so reviews prior to that may not be as relevant. That said, the overall details are mostly correct: this class is quite tough.

The class had two textbooks, both of which are free to access. I'd highly recommend doing the recommended reading from the Arpaci-Dusseau book, it's free and not dense at all. The reading will help you follow along in lecture.

Eggert himself is a pretty engaging lecturer, but he doesn't use slides. He writes on the board in a pretty disorganized manner, and zoning out for a few minutes will probably leave you confused for the rest of lecturer. It's really important to note down everything he says in class, and I mean everything. His exams are usually based on expanding off the ideas he went over in lecture, so if you can follow along in lecture, you should be okay.

Coming to his exams, they're really difficult, but by doing the readings and following along in lecture, you should get at least a little above the median. While the questions don't make sense initially, it's important to read them clearly and write at least something coherent for every question. Even if it's not entirely correct, you'll get good partial credit. I managed to score well on the final by regurgitating a few of Eggert's ideas from lecture. Also, each exam has some giveaway questions, so look for those.

The projects are quite difficult, and a lot of people cheat on them and get high scores. That's why it's important to get above the median on the exams to differentiate yourself.

Eggert himself is a really nice guy, and is great to talk to in office hours. However, he usually doesn't offer specific help on the projects. For that, use the Piazza or go to the TA office hours. Alexandre Tiard is a great TA, and is quite helpful.

CS 111 is a hard class, but is a great way to learn about how computers work and how software is built. Don't shirk, and you'll be fine. Also make liberal use of Eggert's late policy.