PHYS 1660

Great class to take if you have little to no experience with programming. Also good preparation for those who need to take PHYS 2660. Professor Wright is a great teacher, very patient, and flexible. He's one of those teachers who's priority is that their students learn the material and makes an effort to provide every available resource for their success.

Free 1-credit A for CS majors who know even the tiniest bit of C. Otherwise, it might be a little difficult. However, Professor Wright is super sweet and willing to help. Works as a decent precursor to PHYS 2660, but PHYS 2660 doesn't just take it up a notch, overclocks the whole class and puts it into hyper drive. PHYS 1660 is not a lot of work at all, but PHYS 2660 is, so just be prepared for that. If you are not a physics wiz, that's completely fine for this class and it's mostly an intro CS class over a physics class. I recommend taking it if you have time.

I cannot recommend this strongly enough. Brian Wright is an awesome professor. He really wants you to learn, and will do his best to help however he can. The class is neither hard nor time consuming, and is fairly good preparation for 2660.

So for context, I am a French major who only took this course to fulfill science reqs. I had no experience with coding upon taking this course. Basically, Prof Wright assigns 3 homework problems per week and a final project. I truly found the course material VERY difficult and did not find it intuitive at all. Literally the only way I survived this course was by doing the homework in office hours with much help from the professor. If you're anything like me, DEFINITELY use office hours to do well in this class. That being said, Professor Wright was a WONDERFUL professor and really took the time and patience to help me complete homework and understand concepts. He also is pretty chill with deadlines. In short, if you're looking for a 1-credit science course, take this one. The work load isn't bad and the professor is great. Word of caution though - to get an A in the class you need a 95% or above.

This course is probably an easier way for people that have never programmed to get started. It's 1 credit so it's not going to mess up your GPA that bad if you don't do well like something like 1110 and the professor is unbelievably nice and helpful.

This class was super chill, but only because I had prior experience with Java in AP Comp Sci. I had friends who didn't have a coding background who did struggle a lot in this class. However, with one class a week, and three short weekly homework assignments, this class was very low maintenance. The professor also had weekly office hours where you could just finish your homework or get help, and responds to emails very efficiently. Overall, if you have coding experience (this class is in C) and need an easy one credit class with a cool professor, I highly recommend this class. Fair warning, he does write his own textbook, and while I have no trouble in his class (i'm in it rn) if you dont understand the lessons you won't understand them from reading the textbook. 10/10 love Professor Wright though.

This class offers a pretty relaxed introduction to programming. C is not the best language for beginners with its tricky syntax and memory management, but the exercises are very forgiving and there are often pretty direct hints in the textbook. Professor Wright is great; even though he clearly knows a lot about the subject, his lectures are generally pretty beginner-friendly, and he's very responsive to questions in lecture and over email. If you can, try to read through the textbook ahead of time before a chapter is covered in lecture that week.

The course consists of weekly homework assignments (generally 3 per week, though sometimes 2) and a final project that you'll have probably two or three weeks to do. A lot of the final project is done for you in the textbook, so it's a lot less intimidating than it sounds. Do not wait until the last minute to do homework assignments, especially if you are also going into this class without coding experience--the later ones can be really tricky, and you may have to turn in incomplete files for reduced credit. If you can, make use of office hours, since Professor Wright will work through problems step by step with you and be able to see exactly why your code is or is not working.

Though one or two homework sets were particularly frustrating and I got bad grades on them, my experience with the course was positive overall. I started out having written zero lines of code before and my experience influenced me to declare a CPE major. I continue to use skills I learned here and am glad I took PHYS 1660.

Good intro to coding with python for those who have little to no experience. BW basically does the homework for you in office hours, and gives really good feedback for every homework assignment you do. Seems to take off lots of points for frivoulous reasons though. #tCFF23

#tCFF23
I had fun in this class, mostly because it was easier for me. I already had previous experience with coding, but this course is good for those with no experience as well. The professor takes the time to explain the concepts, and he is always willing to do more. He is really open and super friendly. He is one of the sweetest professors I met here. The workload isn't terrible either. They can be done in a day, and if you're having trouble, you can always email the professor for help. He also provides comments on anything you're doing wrong so you can improve (though I will mention that he is sometimes a little picky on how you write the programs, that's for the best of the learning.) The final is pretty simple to do compared to other courses, and the professor is willing to help with that as well. However, it was impossible to search up answers to the questions he assigned since he wrote the textbook we learned from. The textbook is very thorough though and could be used to review what you missed.
If you have room to take one more credit, definitely take this class, both for the new skills and vibes.

Professor Wright is an absolute gem of a professor and a lovely person to be around. What would normally be a run-of-the-mill 1 credit coding class was instead a class I looked forward to due to the joy Professor Wright brought. Every class, he would bring in jokes and fun facts that made us all more interested in the field of STEM. In terms of class material, it was not too much. I would say around two hours outside of class per week for the homework assignments, which the final grade consists of (plus the final exam). The final exam was a take-home project that was not too much effort. I enjoyed the class and definitely recommend it.