note: class taken remotely during covid-19.
tl;dr his lectures are intense but pretty great, projects take a LONG LONG time, exams are nearly impossible, but VERY GENEROUS CURVE.

workload for this class is incredibly heavy even when I didn't do any of the readings assigned for this class. the projects simply are incredibly difficult and I wouldn't recommend you wasting too much time to figure them out yourselves. Definitely try it yourself first for 2-3 hrs, and then please do yourself a favor to reference github when you can't figure it out. otherwise, you will NOT have time for your other classes and will very likely not figure it out at all. don't feel bad about it because almost everyone i knew referenced github at some point. just make sure you understand the code from github 100% then you'll be fine for the assessments and will learn the material. hardest project was 2nd ocaml project and the scheme project, so brace yourself!

definitely attend TAs discussion because they will 130% help you and give you hints for doing the projects! s/o to kimmo who was an amazing TA this quarter :) honestly all the TAs were pretty great too.

his lectures are one of the best at ucla cs and i definitely learned a lot about programming languages from his lectures. these are concepts I can apply to even languages we didn't cover in class, and will definitely help me in my cs career in the future. So, definitely take eggert if you want to learn a lot.

personally, i ended up fine by not doing the readings, but if you have time, please do because you will be able to learn even more. don't worry too much about your performance in the midterm/final. I was around the top 30% and still managed to get a solid A. but maybe it was just because eggert was being nice because of covid and the protests that were going on.

this class will be rough, but if you actually understand the projects and attend lecture, you will do just fine !!

Like every other review on here, this class is hard. It's a ton of work. The exams are very eggert. He said on the day of the final that there was a question on it that he didn't know the answer to. The biggest piece of advice I can provide is to make sure that you do this with other courses that are easy because this class is a huge time suck.

Eggert tests in 97 are still eggert tests, averages around a 60%. The homeworks are super time consuming, but luckily they're only worth like 5% of the grade, so you don't really need to stress them.
The project is what really makes this class special, I would take it again just for that. React is fun, and you have a ton of flexibility in terms of what you want to make and how you want to make it.
I had a group with some pretty talented guys and we made something that'll look great in our portfolios. Definitely take over 35L.

This class is pretty tough. Eggert exams are pretty hard, most of the averages were around a D for the two midterms, not sure about the final exam. This course is probably going to be changed around a little bit since it was experimental for this year, so I expect it'll only get better, but it was definitely difficult during this quarter as many of the lectures that were necessary to complete homework assignments weren't given until after they were due. However, this worked out okay because the homework assignments were only worth about 1-2% each. The group project is worth 50% of your grade and it's a pretty cool way to build something of your choice in a group, and was an experience that helped me learn a lot, which I appreciate. The exams are just really hard and you just have to diligently go over everything from lectures and go through study guides that TA's and LA's help with. Good luck!

[ONLINE QUARTER REVIEW] I got hammered by 35L, so I really wasn't looking forward to this Eggman class. However, I found that I liked the material a lot more and actually kept up with it through the quarter.
- Lifesaver: https://github.com/CS131-TA-team/UCLA_CS131_CodeHelp
- Do the coding assignments yourself, or at the very least, try for a while before succumbing to github. The TA help code above makes doing the assignments by yourself a lot easier than it may have been in previous years. I found that doing the assignments legit made the midterm and final a lot more manageable.
- Eggert is a very captivating lecturer, but you might feel like he rambles a bit (he does). However, he tests on the obscure parts of his lecture. Make sure you have a transcript of all the notes going into the tests.

My biggest criticism of this class is that as soon as you get good at a programming language, you have to switch to a new one. And the scheme project is a complete bitch.

35L is worth and important. People like to hate on the class, but ultimately the assignments hit important concepts and if you do them well, you'll learn a lot!

Comment on the final: if you don't get behind and learn the content of the assignments as they come, you'll still need to study for the final (for many hours). So, it will be tough and don't get behind.

Comment on the TAs: Joe Halabi, Daniel Meirovitch, Ritah Sarmah, Madhu K. were all competent imo. I think Daniel Meirovitch was the best and most experienced while Joe Halabi was the harshest grader (which only impacts Assignment 10). But any objectively graded assignments are curved across your section, so don't worry too much about that.

I thought this course would be way worse than it actually ended up being. They kinda fixed it a little bit by giving way more hints on assignments so you aren't just roaming the stackoverflow forest of information with no clue what to even search about. Now you have something to search before you mindlessly wander the internet trying to figure out the assignments. The assignments are still really time consuming ~10-20 hours per week and sometimes longer on the really hard assignments but the TA's did say assignment averages are higher this quarter because of the hints so they are clearly helpful. The final wasn't nearly as bad during my quarter (first corona online quarter) since the average was a 70 while eggert said he normally aims for a 50. It was less about c programming than past quarters and more about explanation of topics and how interactions would work. Ultimately I think the class is easier now but its still time consuming . That being said, I learned a ridiculous amount in this class and would recommend it because of how it just alters your workflow through technologies and software you can add to your repertoire.

This class is pretty interesting. The project makes this class more similar to CS 130, where you collaborate with a group to create a real world application. This means you get some experience with practical software engineering and if you put the effort in, you'll come out of the class with a unique project that will look good on your resume or portfolio. You also get to learn JavaScript - React and Node.js, along with modern frameworks that are really good to know for industry.
With that being said, all this practical work comes at a cost: the original 35L assignments end up being worth very little (5%) of your grade. This means you'll put much more effort into your project than the assignments. A lot of the time, Eggert didn't even make it to the topic of the assignment in lecture before the assignment was due, and even if he did, he lectures about the topic at a very high level, in a way that doesn't really help with the assignment. Of course, the TAs and LAs are always there to help, but it is a lot of self learning for the assignments, just like in 35L. Because they are worth so little, it is easy to lose motivation to even attempt the assignments, and I'd imagine that this results in you not really getting the preparation you need for later courses (111, 131, etc.)
Exams are still tough, because it's Eggert. Another thing is, because the project is worth 50% of your grade, and the final is 23%, you really don't know 73% of your grade until the end. I think a significant portion of this class took it Pass/Fail for this reason, but future students unfortunately aren't going to get to do that.
Overall, I'd still recommend this class over 35L. I think the class structure and grading balance will only improve in the future, because this was the first time it was ever offered.

I took CS 97 as a replacement for CS 35L. Considering this was the first time 97 was offered, I acknowledge that there were a lot of gaps in curriculum/planning.

The topics we covered were some basic linux commands, emacs, basic scripting (python/bash), git, client/server-side programming, and a little bit of C.

Homework: There were 4 homework assignments (regex/scripting, Git, React, and Makefiles with C). They only counted for a total of 5% so I only did 3/4 of them. The homework itself took a decent amount of time, but a lot of students (including me) didn't bother with doing them completely since it was worth so little. One of my concerns is that since the hw is worth so little, none of us really cared to learn it thoroughly, and I feel like there could be gaps in our knowledge compared to those that took 35L and had to do 10 assignments.

Lectures & Exams: Eggert is a great lecturer. One of the main reasons why I took 97 over 35L is because there are actual lectures. From my experience, write down EVERY LITTLE THING HE SAYS / TYPES because all the exam content is from his lectures directly. LITERALLY WRITE EVERYTHING DOWN. We had 2 midterms, each 10% of our grade, and a final worth 23%. His exam style is mostly short answer, very little coding, and a lot of explaining/writing for conceptual questions. Since we were online this quarter, he made it open note and open computer (but the test is still insanely hard lol). My biggest tip is to literally write ANYTHING. Don't leave anything blank and the TAs will give you partial credit.

Project: We had a group project worth 50% of our grade. You're free to create any type of app you want. My group chose to make a web app so we had to learn React/Node.js on our own, but luckily some of my team had experience in web development. As long as you created something, the TAs were generous with grading the project. It was stressful in that the guidelines for the project seemed very loose, and there were random project check-in due dates that weren't laid out beforehand. Besides those logistics, it was mostly self-learning.

The remaining 3% came from LA surveys/feedback surveys.

Overall, there is a lot of room for improvement for this course in terms of organization, but I think the group project definitely gives you experience for industry since you have to collaborate with others through Git.

CS35L has made me seriously question my decision to come to UCLA.