If you are in the college and are just trying to get a quick look at how CS works and you don't really want to pursue it, I would advise against taking the class. It's a lot of work, as the POTDs towards the end of the year take at least a few hours each and there are three a week. The tests are pretty tough because he gives you no time to do them, and the average was about a C+ for both exams, which is pretty low considering like half the class already knew all this material before coming to UVA. It's definitely interesting, but don't come in thinking it'll be a GPA booster based of this grade distribution.

This class is total bull shit. Do not take whatever you do. Sheriff has a huge stick up his ass, and he is a terrible teacher. If you do not have prior coding experience, you will be totally lost and have no idea what is going on. You have a program due every class day, and these programs on average take at least two hours, and even then, you are not guaranteed to know how to do it. Tests are not too hard in terms of material, but he gives you literally no time to finish it, so it's impossible to do well. Do not take without prior experience.

I am in the college and took this class and would definitely recommend that anyone thinking about a ba in cs should take it! Though the programs can at times be difficult and confusing to write it is always extremely satisfying to turn a program that works and get a good grade on it! The class is not difficult to get an A in, just keep up with the homework and as long as you can do that you will have no problems on the tests!

Professor Sherriff is great. He is truly passionate about teaching computer science and he really tries to make the class fun. The labs for this class are always interesting. The tests aren't too bad, and the Programs of the Day are manageable. I definitely recommend intro to CS with Sherriff.

Extremely fun class that I would recommend to anyone. Sherriff manages to make coding interesting and fun, and this class is the reason why I'm becoming a CS major

Sherriff is a great lecturer and this is by far my favorite class at UVA. I wish I had taken it earlier than 2nd year 2nd semester so that I could declare a CS major.

This is such a cool class, I would highly encourage everyone to at least try it out.

This class made me become a CS major. Sherriff is a great lecturer, making the material very understandable. It's important to stay on top of assignments and do them early, because they ramp up in difficulty as the semester continues.

Professor Sherriff is a great lecturer and really knows the material. The class is fun and enjoyable if you've had no experience. It starts to pick up a little after the first midterm so just be careful about that. The homeworks and projects were never bad and the TA's are always pretty helpful. Would definitely recommend it to anyone.

CS 1110 with Sherriff was definitely the best class I've taken since I've come to UVA. Sherriff has a knack for explaining very technical concepts in a easy to understand way and is also very very funny. While I've heard he can get a little short in office hours, he does warn you early on that office hours (including TAs) are meant for specific questions and not general code review. Overall, I found from personal experience that not going to office hours, but debugging and figuring out problems on my own was incredibly useful and made me feel not only more fluent in Java, but better as a programmer (made assignments and studying for tests less hard).

This class I feel is phenomenally run considering that there were close to 400 students in it. All expectations are very clear, assignments were adequately described, and tests did not deviate a lot from the material Sherriff said would be on the test. I highly recommend going to and paying attention in class. Not only is Sherriff a great teacher, but he often poses practice coding questions in class that we work on. He gives great insight into the best ways to solve those problems, which is at the end of the day is what the main challenge of computer science is. The TA's are very helpful and the projects all push students to learn the material even better. I also recommend staying on top of the material from the get-go. Make sure everything at the beginning makes completely sense, because everything really does build on each other. If you have a weak foundation, all the concepts at the end of the class are not going to make sense. Grading is extremely fair and the process for getting tests back and getting points back on tests is extremely efficient and thorough.