Very tough, but still worth taking even if your major doesn't require it.

Professor Eggert's teaching style is jumping around random topics. Honestly, thought a lot of the information that you learn is very applicable for a real software engineering job, however it was a lot to digest in the format it was taught. Grading wise, I received an A-, but the curve on the final was definitely a big help. Eggert doesn't reveal the curve statistics, but I definitely walked out of that final with a 40% or less, but got curved to an 85%. Not sure if the midterm is curved. Another big portion of your grade is the group project, and I believe the score you receive is completely dependent on the ta grading your project.

This class is hard. If you reach out for genuine help though, the teaching team is there to help you. Make sure you get a good group for the project and make sure you start taking good notes at the very beginning. The exams are open note, but no electronics, so do yourself a favor and write down every word you hear Eggert utter (half figurative). Ask for help! from your peers and from the teaching team.

First of all, this class is very difficult. The assignments take time to figure out, and Dr. Eggert's tests are notoriously unpredictable and difficult. Plus, the assignment grading was super slow this quarter, with 3/6 assignments returned as of the start of finals week. I went into this class expecting the worst, but I actually learned a lot coming out of it. Though he doesn't give you much help on assignments, Dr. Eggert's lectures are incredibly engaging because of how much he knows about everything (he also casually throws insults at random stuff like mac users and c++ without intention, which is also pretty funny). Besides, the TAs are very helpful in terms of guiding you through assignments. By the end of the class, you will likely have learned many useful concepts and tools for industry (aside from emacs, sorry Eggert) as long as you try your hardest on all assignments. Plan around this class if you wish to take it - don't take this class with another difficult class. Plus, Dr. Eggert writes the assignments, but the TAs grade them with their own rubrics, so pay attention to Piazza posts about the assignments. Though grading is incredibly slow, the TAs (at least for this qtr) seem to be pretty lenient and won't give you too much of a hard time as long as you adhere to their rubric. Make sure you do your best on all the assignments cuz you are not getting 'em back until weeks 9-10. It was a very tough journey for me, but it was worth it.

As is well-known, this class was horrible. Labs almost every week with almost no direction and covering many disparate topics. I had Tameez Latib as my TA, and he was good, but there's only so much you can so when the content and structure of the class is so bad. It's a really great thing that this class was discontinued and replaced by CS 97.

I did not like this class very much. I thought the material was very very important, but I feel like the online format combined with Eggert's brand of more chaotic teaching methods were not a good fit. The TAs were really nice.

The most important thing I got out of this class was I made a bunch of friends doing the project together, and I feel like I got a good overview of SWE.

The worst part of this class by far was the tests and the very non-transparent grading. The test averages were abysmal. The curve was a lot harsher this quarter, too, probably because projects were worth more than usual (15% as opposed to ~5%).

Overall, 5/10 class. Get through it and you will be a better computer scientist. It's like a light hazing.

There's a project each week, so 10 assignments total over the quarter.

Each project covers that week's lecture of some new cs topic (i.e. shell scripting, ssh, linux, system calls). The projects really don't require much time, but each one requires that you understand that particular cs topic well and getting a good grasp of it in one week might be difficult at times.

The final is hard, but honestly pretty doable and partial credit is key to getting a solid score.

This class, even though they have made some assignments much shorter, is still a lot of work and the last assignment is worth 5% of your grade and you're only given a week to handle it ( with some research presentation and still trying to study for finals). Also, it doesn't help that his final will absolutely destroy you. Extremely difficult and just all round horrible. My best advice is to start looking on the material from now, give yourself a head start, you'll need it.

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

35L has a bad reputation for a reason. I just took CS 111, and the workloads are pretty much the same except for the readings--which is insane. The TAs try their best to teach whatever language you're covering in two days, but there isn't much you can cram of the basics of C/python/Bash in four hours while also covering the spec. The specs are often confusing and in the case of my specific quarter, wrong (we had to check a google doc instead for one lab). If you have a bad TA, just go to a good one--your grade depends on it! You don't get your grades back before the next project and a few rely on the previous project. There isn't a test script like with 111 so if your program is consistently slightly wrong, you're screwed. Also,The beaglebone is used once and it costs $100. Overall, this class is trial by fire.