CS 2110

The course is fine, if you're decent at coding. The tests are more focused on the concepts than the coding though, so that's kind of annoying. But DO NOT TAKE IT WITH BASIT. She is DREADFUL, and has little technical knowledge. She doesn't know how to run a lecture, period. Avoid her at all costs.

I had Professor Basit for a week before I switched into Tychoneviech's class. She is a REALLY nice person and you can tell she genuinely wants to help you. She has a passion for teaching. But she is a really bad professor. She often makes mistakes typing and when her results do not match what she expects, she does not acknowledge so and continues on and acts as though the incorrect answer was what she expected. The average for her class on the first exam was supposedly 10% less than Tych's sections. So basically, she is really nice but I would steer clear of her if you can. If you don't, your grade will suffer.

This class is needed for CS and SYS engineering majors, but do not take this class with Nada. She is terribly boring, and you will spend the entire class on facebook or sporcle because she will never do anything to grab your attention. Take the class with Luther if at all possible, he is much more engaging. I stopped going to Nada's section just to go to Luther's. Her slides are good to review before the test, but you should have access to those regardless of which section you are in. Nada is not worth the time.

The only redeeming factor about Professor Basit is that she tries really hard. She definitely cares about her students, but she is not a good CS teacher. I feel as if I have wasted a semester being in this course and it is disappointing because the course requires a great deal of work. Also, beware of the Android project. It takes a good 30-40 hours to finish, and is extremely difficult. I do not recommend this course if you want to take it for fun. It is far too time consuming for this.

RIP to those whose only option left is Basit. She won't be able to draw your attention.

Lectures are not useful, and Basit does not provide any materials to help students succeed except for very basic powerpoints that are often incomplete and lack essential information. It is basically a self-taught course with challenging but not impossible homework assignments and tests. The worst part of the course is the final android group project where you have to teach yourself how to code a game in android and finish it in only a few weeks.

You might be thinking, "Professor Basit can't be that bad, can she?"

But she is.

The only redeeming factor about Prof. Basit is that she is nice and reasonable. For example, she extended the deadline of the Android project by a week because some people were going to be away for Easter weekend, etc. However, her lectures are mind-numbingly boring as she just reads off her slides. Near the end of the semester, attendance of her lectures was so poor that she added blanks into the slides she posted on Collab so that students would come just to fill them in. A dirty trick, Basit. Now, I should probably mention the topic of coding. Basit does not know how to code. Earlier in the semester, she would attempt to write code in front of us only to come across some error that she didn't know how to fix. Later on, she would just have her code pre-written and walk us through it, but that was not very effective. The course had some organizational problems, such as when the TAs gave conflicting instructions about the Android project, most likely because Basit did not make it clear exactly what we had to do.

If you do take this course with Basit despite my warnings, you will probably be fine, but you will inevitably miss out on the opportunity to enjoy a class that had so much more potential.

Don't take CS 2110 with Professor Basit. You will waste a semester learning nothing because she doesn't teach at all. You learn everything on your own from the textbook and other online resources, but not in class.

Basit is a wonderful professor. She's very friendly and definitely wants her students to do well. While the material for this class is occasionally somewhat boring, she's an enthusiastic lecturer which makes it much easier to pay attention.

Also, some general advice:
To those who can code well - the class in general is much more concept driven than code driven, which makes it seem deceptively easy at times. Just make sure you read through the lecture slides and you should do fine.
To those who are more conceptually oriented: writing code for this class is relatively easy, but don't neglect your coding skills - you will likely frustrate your homework/project partners (and yourself).

Basically what's been said below.

The course is more concept-driven than code-driven, far more than I thought it would be. The first couple of homeworks are pretty straight foward, and you usually work with a partner.

The Android project was absolutely egregious. Not because it was hard, but because there was so much ambiguity and disconnect between the professor's expectations and the student's understanding of the project. It also doesn't help that Professor Basit does not have any hand in grading the assignments.

Overall, the professor was very amicable, but her coding practices were almost non-existent. This class isn't hard; the only difficulty that comes with it is bridging the gap between what you expect and what the professor expects.