This class sucks because of the weekly homeworks that are time consuming. I believe there are 2 in particular that really suck and the rest are ok. I would personally start like thursday/friday and be able to finish by saturday midnight. I stopped going to discussion after a while because you can effectively read the slides and get all the info you need. However, as a CS major, I will say that this class is REALLY useful and its probably worth it to learn everything you can. The final was really hard. I had 103 degree fever while taking it so it just felt like a fever dream and the only thing I remember about it was that it was hard. I do remember that there was one question which seemed really unrelated to any of the projects we did. But in general all the questions are supposed to be based off one of the homework. Also the lab portion of each homework is too long to do in lab so be prepared to do that at home too.

This class sucked p bad. Not really sure what I gained from this class. Partially to my own fault due to not trying as hard as I could have, but also the level of difficulty for each assignment was kind of ridiculous. I'd go to Lab and feel like I learned something, yet I'd start an assignment and often times have literally 0 clue how to do what I wanted to do. It felt like I got exposed to many topics, yet learned almost nothing. Completely unrelated topics each week definitely didn't help. It was a bad time. Just get it over with

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

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.

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.

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.

God this class is awful. Graduating UCLA and the most awful experience of my life. There are way too many projects and too much material to review. It's great if you get some TAs who give most of the class great grades and is clear. If you get a ass of TA like mine, good luck. Doesn't explain and yells in class. Grades awfully and the average turns out to be 30~%. I still have nightmares.

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.

Unfortunately, this class is based on your TA. Eggert basically tells the TAs "Here are the topics and projects you have to teach, now go have fun" and the TAs are left to sift through the madness that is Eggert. They are there to help you get through his cryptic projects while somehow learning Linux, Python, Git, and seemingly random elements of C. I was lucky enough to have a competent TA. My friend was not so lucky. Along with a 3rd friend, we slaved over the harder projects (have fun with multithreading). I highly recommend taking this class with people you know, even if they're not in your section; for 2 of the projects, they actually require you to find a partner; with the other projects, you will benefit from having an extra set of eyes to collaborate with.

Over time, you'll appreciate how smart Eggert is. Though his specs are a nightmare to understand, once you get through it, you'll look at it and feel amazing for having completed it. A bunch of the projects feature bugs and patches in real-life open-source software that Eggert himself programmed back in the day. Holistically, it's really quite impressive.

Lastly, you will benefit from using Linux on your personal laptop. It's super easy to install alongside Windows, and took me more time to download Ubuntu than to actually install it. I say this because SEASNet Linux is infuriating to use if you don't have a strong internet connection. Therefore, it's easier to do the projects on your personal Linux, and test them on SEASNet every once in a while. In addition, the projects have weird requirements such as "making sure your files are ASCII text files that have no more than 80 characters per line, with no carriage returns." This is basically making sure the file is easily readable from the Linux command line, which isn't a problem if you're already using Linux.

The other comments speak truth in regards to your final and grade distributions.

This class is a lab... and it is curved based on the section. I ended up with a smart section unluckily and got a raw score of 88%. The final was apparently too easy...

I would say the concepts are very useful but the course is still poorly structured despite the changes including use of Beaglebone for one of the assignments. It is just that there is not really any real way to learn these concepts unless you practice using these tools outside of class. People who are familiar with Python and git will probably be in an advantage over the others just because there are just some things that if you are a beginner, you just won't know. You just won't suddenly master the nuances of a particular tool over one week - years of software engineering experience, or at the very least experiences with multiple side projects, will fare you better in learning these tools than reading the manual or something of that kind.