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.

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.

(Warning: unpopular opinion ahead!)
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Professor Eggert is *fantastic* and one of the best professors the UCLA Computer Science department has to offer. He is incredibly knowledgeable about the field and stays up to date on modern improvements. CS 35L is essentially a crash course in "how to do programming in practice"; i.e., one of the most practical courses in our theory-heavy curriculum. Very few other schools have such a course; MIT taught it in a one-off, calling it "the missing semester" of your CS education (https://missing.csail.mit.edu/). That doesn't mean it's not useful. This course will teach you a broad range of subjects that will help you gain familiarity with what it's like to actually program as a job or as a hobby: you need wide-ranging knowledge of how computer systems work, proficiency in scripting languages (Bash, emacs lisp, Python) and terminal usage, you ideally should master an IDE of some sort (yes, Eggert is a bit outdated with Emacs), and menagerie other niche topics this course teaches.

What the above is essentially saying is that this course is different but incredibly useful, and may be the one you'll find most immediately relevant to your everyday working experience on a computer. That being said, unless you have years of programming and messing around on a computer behind you, this class will be quite challenging since it tries to teach (in my opinion) at least two or three years of hacking around on a computer in a mere quarter. That's crazy. Good luck. But if you don't find this course fun, challenging, or interesting, that might be a wake up call that your life sitting at a desk in a corporation will also not be too exciting. Just saying.
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Of course, most people agree that Prof. Eggert lectures well. They're most concerned about the tests and, of course, the grades. And I will say: Professor Eggert tests like no other. He asks open-ended questions that require broad knowledge of the subject and, generally, a deeper understanding of how each subject he's lectured on works, and oftentimes how they would work together. This means his tests are perhaps the most academically rigorous: despite all the fun you may make of humanities majors, you'll suddenly be in their playing field on an exam. For many of the questions, you must make an argument that uses technical details, sure, but overall shows a concrete understanding of the larger system of components at hand in the class. That's right, timed writing is back. I actually quite prefer this testing style since it's partial credit heavy and tests deeper understanding over mere rote memorization of certain technical processes... but your mileage may vary!
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Anyways. I'd say "take the class!" but you have to. So instead I'll say: pay attention to Eggert's wise words, laugh at his jokes, and remember if you're feeling overwhelmed that everyone else is, too.

Eggert is a great lecturer, horrible test writer. This class teaches you so much so fast and it hurts while you're learning it all for the first time. However, at the end I feel like I learned so many skills that I could put into actual use, such as app development. It's gonna be a tough quarter, so take a light course load. I believe in you!

This class kicked my ass. There are 6 homeworks, 2 tests, and a group project. Homeworks just sucked. You have to learn so much in such a short time. I barely was able to keep up. Eggert is a wonderful guy, however, and is a great lecturer. Tests are made by the devil himself. The team project is a react native app that you create. That was fun.