Kinda tough class, but Reiss is helpful during office hours and pretty good at explaining concepts in lectures.

Good teacher, highly competent (knows his stuff and knows how to explain it well) etc. I strongly recommend reading the textbook (at least skimming it to get the gist) before coming to class, otherwise, you'll be lost because Reiss moves fast - he expects you to have done the readings. Some of the labs and homeworks can be tricky, but they're usually pretty short. Midway through the semester a new teacher Venkat came - oy vey he was atrocious. Fortunately, Venkat will probably not be at the university for much longer, while Reiss is here to stay.

Class is difficult but Reiss is a God. If you don't believe it, look at Ashish Venkat...

By far the best professor to take CS 3330 with.

Best online course I’ve taken. I’ll explain. Reiss is an incredibly smart dude and the material is fairly interesting and cohesive. But the best part of this class is easily his video recorded lectures. I’m the type of student that learns best at their own pace, and it’s super great to basically never have to come to class outside of exams and still feel like you’re keeping up. The videos even have speed controls so you can zoom through the slow bits if you like. And procrastinators worry not, weekly online quizzes ensure you’re always relatively on track. Serious shoutout to Reiss for this - it’s not something he has to do, but it’s super helpful that he does.

I think Reiss really cares about his students and he really wants them to do well. He's good at explaining most of the times.

Reiss is a genius, but he's too smart for us. He would ask questions in class no one could answer and move on like it wasn't really a problem. This class itself is the worst CS class I've taken in terms of combined workload and difficulty, but if you put the work into HWs and Labs, that makes up a big portion of your grade and your awful quiz grades will be balanced out hopefully. The quizzes suck because it's hard to understand everything from the textbook and reading Stack Overflow answers, but after going to lecture in the class following the quiz, you can usually understand the quiz. It's just hard to understand it the first time around. Exams suck, but unlike 2150 the practice exams have answer keys so they are pretty helpful. Don't try to go through this class without understanding the material and really spend time trying to learn it. It's the best way to do well on exams. You can fudge the HWs and still do alright, but you might get destroyed by the exams if you don't understand the stuff. Good luck with this class and Godspeed.

Reiss is definitely one of the worst professors I've had during my time here. Besides not being particularly great at explaining the material, he was also very unapproachable during office hours, having no patience and clearly showing frustration when you try to ask questions. While I don't doubt he knows his stuff, he has no passion for teaching/helping students learn and is incredibly devoid of empathy. On top of this, his refusal to round my grade (it was less than 0.03 difference) basically cost me my scholarship and any chance at a decent grad school, even after I explained it to him. The quizzes are ridiculously convoluted and you're better off just randomly guessing instead of trying to make an informed opinion from the text because they're phrased in a way that's meant to mess you up. If you're BS, you'll probably be fine because of your prereqs, and if you're a BA, you'll most likely be spending more time on this class. Just get through it.

I hated this class. I am definitely a CS major and have never enjoyed CPE topics, so this class was my own personal hell. Reiss clearly knows his stuff, but he’s too smart to break the concepts down understandably. Do all of the homeworks and labs, and try your best on the quizzes, and you’ll be fine. Luckily all of his tests are curved so it’s extremely hard to fail the class if you put in effort. Go to office hours early. Ben, Brittany, and DJ were the best TAs. BombHW, PIPE1, PIPE2, and smooth are all pretty hard, so go to office hours really early for those. I went to PIPE1 office hours the night before it was due and had to wait in the queue for 3 hours. Go EARLY and you will be fine. Good luck!

Sometimes this course is conceptually difficult, but the workload is very manageable. You get at the least a week from when a lab or homework is posted to when it is due. Reiss is obviously very smart, but doesn't always teach things in clearest way at first. He'll use a lot of diagrams with a lot of components that nobody understands until like a month into the course, but you can take comfort in the fact that nobody understands them and it'll all make more sense by the first exam. The lectures are posted online. I found that he explained things better/more concisely in the later lecture, probably because he got a feel for where the main confusions are during the first lecture of the day. The quizzes are difficult even though they're open note and lecture recording, they require actual application and thought. There's no secret to doing well on them except it helps to watch lectures over before taking.