You might be wondering why I put 1/5 for “easy” but “5/5” for interesting. That’s because Szum is a fantastic professor, but the material itself is absolute murder. The class hinges on the C programming language and math at the level of at least Calculus with Analytical Geometry. With my multiple years of programming experience, I was able to easily do the C programming part but I bombed the math parts of the two exams I took because I had terrible math professors in the past and failed those classes entirely. I had a 70% with a project and an exam still ungraded by the time the withdrawal deadline came around, so I didn’t take my chances and I withdrew from the course. If Szum had graded those two things a little bit faster, I might have stayed in if I was more certain about my grad...read more

Learn math before taking this class. That’s the part that gets you.

Want to figure out if CS is for you? Worried about the Foundation Exam? Just interested in coding? Then this class is for you! Szum’s lectures are awesome and he will prepare you well for the FE (he even used to work for Google!). Be warned though: the learning curve is very steep and things go at a fast pace. You will have to keep yourself in check in order to not fall behind (that means practicing your code/coding parts of your projects nearly every day). Projects are given out every two weeks, so make sure you start them when he hands them out! Even though Szum is very helpful, DO NOT CHEAT AT ALL COSTS! Catching cheaters is Szum’s equivalent to chilling with some Netflix and wine at the end of the day. He’s only this strict since he really wants you to get better at coding and pass th...read more

Again, I recommend starting your projects as soon as they are assigned. When I was in Szum’s class, some kids spent over 20 hours on projects! Luckily though, Szum’s office hours are very helpful and so are the TAs in the Cave! This class is also very math and logic-heavy and that’s the main thing that weeds people out of CS (sadly, myself included). Make sure you brush up on pointers and linked lists as well!

Szumlanski's class is very difficult, but very vital if you're looking to gain the knowledge you'd actually want for a job in the field. The course has very fair grading, but don't expect to put in no work and get a C. Highly recommend.

Read each assignment's PDF the night it comes out and work on it a little every day. Eustis was down at pivotal moments, so you'd want to be sure to get the assignments done as fast as possible.

Szumlanski is honestly one of THE best professors out there. His course is tough for beginners in programming, but goes through the content thoroughly and adds lecture notes usually after class. In lectures, he explains the content through code demonstrations (which you can follow) and provides source code in his lecture notes. He has 6 programming assignments across the year and 3 tests (including the final). He bans the use of IDEs and requires you to compile using gcc in a linux shell (it sounds bad at first, but you learn a lot more from it), essentially giving you experience using linux (using commands like scp, cat, diff, vim, ssh, output redirects, and piping).

Attend his or his TA's office hours, and do the practice problems and labs he provides! Most importantly, practice programming weekly.