Randy Scovil's homework specs were so vague and unhelpful. Most times, they would omit many details that you would only find out in Gradescope tests. Once you find them out, you have to go to Office Hours and wrestle with.the TAs to get help. Scovil's OH were like his homework specs: vague and unhelpful. When you ask him a question, he would ask you a question back and leave you even more confused.

Submitted Mon Apr 01 2024

To parrot everyone else: start assignments as early as you can! You can 100% every assignment if you give yourself enough time, and that makes the exams much easier too. I recommend getting on the course's schedule. Modules unlock on Monday, but their assignments don't open till Friday. Use the week to go through the notes (and work through the previous week's assignment) so when the new assignment unlocks you can start it the day it opens. Going into this class I was nervous as hell but I took the final with a high A For the work itself, draw things out on a whiteboard or scratch paper and use the debugger! Compare your program against their test cases then use the conditional debugger to get to the test that's failing (because you will have failing tests and that's okay!) and step through/into slowly to see which variables are off. It's significantly less stressful doing this process when you know the assignment isn't due for like 5+ days, and practicing it on the assignments before AVL makes AVL more manageable (that one it's updating the parent/child references that fucks everything up)

Submitted Mon Mar 25 2024

I enjoyed this course and found the assignments and tests to be fair and balanced. The concepts were explained OK in the readings, but the assignments really helped to drill in the knowledge. My main pieces of advice for this class are to (1) actually read the explorations and take notes - a lot of people complained that things were not explained but they were in the explorations - and (2) start the assignments as early as possible!!!! Some of the assignments sneak up on you in terms of difficulty. I studied moderately for the exams and got a 100 on both, they are pretty fair and go over a good amount of the class without being too nitpicky and detailed. Good luck!

Submitted Thu Jan 04 2024

Start assignments early.

Submitted Thu Dec 21 2023

Make sure you grind the material. Review online. With python this is fairly easy. Most of the structures have been done before, so refer to other material to get a good starting point if you're every stuck.

Submitted Wed Dec 20 2023

Make sure you have a good understanding of object-oriented programming! The assignments are not too difficult if you watch lecture and read the explorations. The midterm and final were fair.

Submitted Sun Dec 17 2023

You don't get the benefit of collaboration in this course like you did in 161-162.

Submitted Thu Sep 07 2023

Not too hard at all. You go over the basic data structures and implement them from scratch starting with a static array to hashmaps. However, they provide starter code and the assignment document is very detailed and well written. Tests were fair and as long as you do the explorations you should be fine.

Submitted Mon Aug 21 2023

Get a head start on all the assignments so you know which ones are going to be difficult before the deadline. TAs and Prof are super helpful.

Submitted Mon Jun 19 2023

Start assignments early and get comfortable with the PyCharm debugger!!! The debugger is absolutely your best friend. I do not mean adding in print statements, I mean the actual debugger; put in break points where you start running into trouble and step into your code slowly. TAs are invaluable, get into office hours the second they start and shoot off your message right away to get into the queue because it fills up fast.

Submitted Mon Jun 19 2023