Introduction to Computing

I came into this course with no prior experience in coding, and in the first few weeks the difference in level became clear especially with labs. Although it felt overwhelming at the start, there are many resources available to you!! Drop in sessions and additional help with Professor Chodrow made the class easier. He is always optimistic and motivating you. It was a challenging but enjoyable course which sparked my interest to pursue this as a major.

I came into this course with no prior experience in coding, and in the first few weeks the difference in level became clear especially with labs. Although it felt overwhelming at the start, there are many resources available to you!! Drop in sessions and additional help with Professor Chodrow made the class easier. He is always opti …Read more

Course overall wasn't too bad. Homework was relatively easy. We did often have quizzes but they were generally easy to average and he was a fair grader. If a lot of people got a question wrong, he would remove the question from the quiz. Also exams were online. That being said near the end the difficulty ramped really quick with like 2 difficult projects.

One of the GOAT professors. Caring, understanding, and exceptional at teaching a difficult introductory course. You can always talk to him whenever and class passes by pretty quickly with him teaching.

Course was well designed and structured, making it easy for students to manage assignments outside of the classroom. As someone who never had any prior experience in computer science before, I did find this course a little challenging and very time-consuming. The professor did a well job sharing the base knowledge to a concept but I personally felt that there could have been more explanation on the reasoning behind certain python concepts rather than giving us a formula (I did find myself having to take a lot more time to figure out how to apply certain concepts to different problems on my own) but then again considering the amount of content we had to cover in a semester I think as long as you sit down and figure thinks out and seek help from peer tutors and the professor AND study hard for your exams, you should get an A.

Course was well designed and structured, making it easy for students to manage assignments outside of the classroom. As someone who never had any prior experience in computer science before, I did find this course a little challenging and very time-consuming. The professor did a well job sharing the base knowledge to a concept but I …Read more

Professor Chodrow is a sweetheart. Not only is he extremely passionate about Computer Science, but he's approachable and empathic. He finds a way to help students when they are struggling and actually listens to our needs. Yeah sure, the work can be difficult but there is always someone to help you!

Philip (Professor Caplan) knows what he's doing. Despite having a strong background in not only computer science (of course) but also math and physics, he breaks down important concepts into understandable bits and spreads them out in lecture videos, labs and pair work. Perhaps (due to COVID, but) rare in introductory courses in the Computer Science department, the midterms and final exam were administered completely online, i.e., no handwritten component. There was a Canvas quiz for concept understanding, but the coding questions were on a fully functional IDE online so we could run the code ourselves and feel confident about the results. Personally, I pretty much always knew my progress in the course.

Philip (Professor Caplan) knows what he's doing. Despite having a strong background in not only computer science (of course) but also math and physics, he breaks down important concepts into understandable bits and spreads them out in lecture videos, labs and pair work. Perhaps (due to COVID, but) rare in introductory courses in the …Read more

I absolutely loved this course. I had not taken any computer science classes nor coded before joining this class. It made me fall in love with computer science and I can't wait to take more classes in the department! Professor Chodrow is a great guy and was very helpful and accommodating.

Professor Chodrow is super accomodating. Course progresses fairly quickly but builds on itself well. Might be hard to keep up if you're not at all familiar with any of the concepts, but we had a lot of help available from students and professor. Exam was reasonably hard but not deadly, nice thing is that work that goes into your final grade is more spread out in homework tasks and projects. A LOT of collaborative work, sometimes frustrating when skill levels differ between partners, but sometimes valuable also.

Professor Chodrow is super accomodating. Course progresses fairly quickly but builds on itself well. Might be hard to keep up if you're not at all familiar with any of the concepts, but we had a lot of help available from students and professor. Exam was reasonably hard but not deadly, nice thing is that work that goes into your fina …Read more

I had a great experience in this course, Professor Phil is a great instructor who's very enthusiastic when it comes to teaching. He always makes lectures interesting, however some topics of the course move quite fast but as someone who's had prior experience programming in Python, it wasn't an issue. If you have experience with Python I'd say not to worry to much. Professor Phil is also very easy to talk to so if you have any issues whether it be content or anything reaching out is your best option.

I had a great experience in this course, Professor Phil is a great instructor who's very enthusiastic when it comes to teaching. He always makes lectures interesting, however some topics of the course move quite fast but as someone who's had prior experience programming in Python, it wasn't an issue. If you have experience with Pytho …Read more

Phil is by far my favorite professor this semester. He is extremely passionate about the topics he is teaching and very patient with students. I walked into the course without any background in computer science, and walked out being interested in making it a minor/major. The class was quite fast-paced it wasn’t very difficult because there was loads of help and resources. I would strongly recommend taking a computer science course with Phil.

Phil is by far my favorite professor this semester. He is extremely passionate about the topics he is teaching and very patient with students. I walked into the course without any background in computer science, and walked out being interested in making it a minor/major. The class was quite fast-paced it wasn’t very difficult because …Read more

I took professor Chodrow class this fall of 2022. He’s an energetic, passionate, and great teacher. You might find his teaching to be a bit fast, but if you meet with him after hours or talk to him 1-1, this is where his teaching truly shines. Over all my experience with this class has been quite good, not much complaint.

This class was my first experience in computer science and it was really tough at times. Especially in the last month, it felt like we were going way too fast. That said, Vaccari was very kind and helpful and provided a bunch of useful resources on top of his engaging lectures. We had two coding assignments per week (one hw and one lab) and I frequently had to visit the peer tutors to make sense of them. The exams were also pretty tricky, especially the final because the last few weeks of content felt so rushed.

This class was my first experience in computer science and it was really tough at times. Especially in the last month, it felt like we were going way too fast. That said, Vaccari was very kind and helpful and provided a bunch of useful resources on top of his engaging lectures. We had two coding assignments per week (one hw and one l …Read more

I loved this course with professor foley. He made me want to take CS as a major. The environment for working on projects was relaxed because he wanted to make it as similar to the work place as possible. It was a steady pace for me but I can see how it may be a bit challenging to others. Must stay on top of your work to succeed but its not too hard to.

I found the material of the class helpful and engaging however the lectures were not so much. I thought that he presented the material logically and and it was relatively easy to follow the class, however the class occasionally felt like I was there just for participation reasons. The workload is very manageable with only weekly lab assignments.

Professor Vaccari was the best. His lectures were really clear and always aligned to the problem sets. His class was manageable in terms of the workload, and he gives you time in class to work on the lab where one is able to ask questions.

I would not take this class again because of the teaching style. I felt talked to rather than taught at. Most of my learning happened independently and I only learned when I went to office hours. He was an easy grader.