Oh Eggert. Sweet sweet Eggert. The grade lottery I am playing right now and don't know where I'll come out on the other side. Needless to say, the midterm was horrid. I cannot wait for the final (to be even worse). I like his lecture style, I don't find the information to be presented in a way that's hard to handle, but where I draw the line is the labs being worth abyssmally little percentages and taking hours on end. I know this is for our benefit, but if I'm putting in the effort to get a good grade on the lab, I wish it mattered more. Another thing. The project. THE project. Basically zero guidance on where to start and what you need to know. It follows the Standard Eggert Model: self teach. But I literally pay so much money for these classes that there is zero point to self teach. If I wanted to do that, I wouldn't have gone to college. Simple as that.

I don't know why people keep giving this class a bad review. It's a great class and I learned a ton from Eggert!

I think as it is with all Eggert classes, he bins you on the final based on ur project grades. So make your project grades are very high (other wise you'll suffer more than the bad project grade!)

This class is just something you'll have to suffer through. The course is extremely difficult and you won't have very much guidance for most of it, and from what I can tell, that's mainly the point. You'll learn a lot in this course, and you'll be teaching yourself much of it.

Make sure to pay very close attention to the lectures, since Eggert constructs his exams directly from small tidbits he mentioned during that quarter's lectures. Don't worry about making your notes concise; make them organized instead. The exams are open-book and you will often need the tiny details that Eggert mentioned in passing during a lecture in order to answer a question on the exam.

I got really lazy after the midterm and didn't end up the second half of the class's lectures until the day before the final when I binged them. I definitely do not recommend this strategy, though it ended up working out for me since I remembered almost everything that he had covered in lecture and I ended up doing extremely well (relatively, I got a 69% lol) on the final. So, if you really stressed about the exams, I would genuinely recommend rewatching lectures before exams. Though it'll be a bit painful sitting through it, you can probably multitask browsing Reddit, playing your favorite farming simulator, or building a Lego set while watching the lectures on 2x speed.

You don't really need lectures to do any of the assignments nor for the group project, which is worth a whopping 35% of your total grade. Please make sure to find a good group people you know and trust before it's too late, preferably before you even attend the first lecture. Having a good team of 5 is pivotal to reducing stress in this already very stressful class. You're mostly left on your own by the instructors for the group project, where you'll have to construct some sort of dynamic application with the skills you definitely did not learn from lectures or discussion. The course content is mostly unrelated to the group project.

Eggert has a really lenient late policy for assignments. You should start early but do not worry about having to be multiple days late. If you calculate how much of your total grade you're losing out by taking a few extra days to complete an assignment (also remember that the class is heavily curved), you may realize that you were stressing way too much on turning your assignment in on time.

The TAs are usually pretty late on grading assignments and you do not get much feedback. PLEASE make sure to submit a regrade request on anything you might find reasonable to get points back on. Named your file incorrectly? Regrade request. Assignment guideline was ambiguous? Regrade request. Forgot to comment a piece of code that crashed everything? Regrade request. This philosophy also applies to the midterm, something I regret not taking advantage of. The TAs were very understanding.

Learn as much as you can. Good luck. Unless your laptop is already plastered in arch stickers, you'll probably need it.

This class absolutely sucks, but has some silver linings. Here's a review from someone who isn't insanely cracked at programming and doesn't converse in Mandarin:
First: assignments. There are 6 assignments, most of which do not pertain to anything said in lecture, each of which takes a stupid amount of time and is pretty pointless for your grade (worth 1.5% each). Use GitHub + GPT to save your own time and sanity.
Second: The TAs. The negative reviews of the TAs are completely accurate, most TAs for this class are insanely useless, not familiar with the content, or teach you the wrong information that screws you later on the test. I stopped going to discussions as the TA-lead section is almost completely useless and sometimes even negative for your own learning. Also, the TAs constantly screw up grading and misgraded 4 out of my 6 assignments, so be sure to regrade request any possible assignment + midterm. The midterm averages increased by 4% just because of regrades and how incompetent the 35L TAs are.
Third: The tests. I got about a std deviation below the mean of 48% on the midterm, but somehow crushed the final and got in the top 20%. Here is the strategy to do good on a Paul Eggert exam: take notes of everything he mentions in lecture/writes down. GPT/understand all the concepts you are unfamiliar with. The stuff he barely goes over or covers is always tested. Become really familiar with the workings of the assignments, especially shell commands, Linux, and Python. Print all lecture + searched up notes. The small things he mentions in lectures are very similar to test questions, Having all lecture notes printed saved me for the final.
Lastly, some tips. Participate a few times in Piazza for participation points. He covers things really fast during lecture, I preferred to watch the recordings to actually write down what he says. The final project was easily the best part, but be sure to get a good group and start early. The content after the first 4 weeks begins to get slightly more interesting and useful. This class is pretty useful as a whole (besides Emacs Lisp). It's also pretty generously curved: around average on the tests will get you a B, above and below average and between 1 Std dev will get a B-/B+, anything above/below std dev will get you an A/C.

No more need to say. He is Eggert. Be prepared to be egged for the exam...

However, Eggert's class really worth it. I end up learning so much useful staff by the end of the quarter.

Get ready to get fucked on the most ridiculous tests you will ever see in your life

You will get egged! Overall this class is TOO fast, tough, but teaches you some important material that's pretty practical. If you thought CS32 was fast, this is easily 3 times that.
This class is something that'd work well in semester system. But absolutely sucks in quarter. Everything is bunched up together, you go over fundamentals way too quick (within 2 weeks). You are into the next huge topic in 2 weeks which is crazy. It is WAYYYY too fast paced. The assignments are weird. The tests are even weirder and super tough. The graders make mistakes, and some of the TAs are absolute shit in their grading. They are ruthless, if u dont have something specific, you will get 0/10 for a question where you probably should've gotten partial 5 points.

Let's start with the cons of this class. For one the tests are hard, there are no workarounds for that. Since you have access to all the notes possible during exams there almost isn't a point to studying. The averages are low, but there is a curve at the end. Another pain is the assignments. The specs are vague and frustrating at times, and you'll for sure find yourself checking piazza for any sort of help deciphering what is going on. The hardest assignments for sure were the second Git assignment and the C assignment. I would agree with many that having experience with any of the topics (those including Linux, Shell, Python, Emacs, Lisp, JavaScript/webdev, git, etc) will make things a lot easier. I would recommend learning beforehand to ease the load.

Now for the pros. Eggert is undoubtably a great lecturer. For topics that could very well be dull he does a great job of making things interesting and always provides a good history on topics. The topics he covers are practical and will for sure show up in any sort of job/development you do. While he may seem intimidating he is quite open to answering anyone's questions, whether it be in lecture or office hours.

Overall the toils are relative to your prior knowledge, which may or may not be fair for many.

Eggert is awesome!! Sure the class is really hard but Eggert is probably my favorite lecturer so far at UCLA and I learned so much useful stuff.

His midterms are supposed to be a "learn while you go test", however it favors those that have more background knowledge and more information printed on their cheat sheets.