nTHM/jzaNwA0CjQ4/XQvOw==2025-08-11T02:57:11Zsummer 2025
The lecture material was quite interesting, but to be honest, I found the project work quite displeasurable. I doubt most students will feel this way - to a normal student, maybe the non-coding assignments are a nice break from other classes. But, I think it's worth putting the word out for others like myself: if you find programming assignments fairly easy in general but struggle to stay motivated when the assignment isn't technical, you may have a tougher experience than others have indicated.
It's not like I would even disagree with the sentiment that this is an easy course. When there's no project to be working on, the class is <4 hrs/wk of commitment, no sweat. The problem is, the projects are fairly long reports that can get quite involved if you're trying to get a good grade. One of mine was >20 pages, and I felt quite miserable working on it by the end. We were not given any clear indication of what level of effort would be considered acceptable for that assignment, so part of that was me erring on the side of caution.
Granted, also, that there were only two such papers in the course, so the average workload was still fairly low. But those papers easily took 16-24 hours each, and it was a complete slog for me. I did not have any fun at all working on those papers, although I really enjoyed watching the lectures. So, if you're on the fence about taking this course because you're used to programming assignments and this is "different," consider my experience a data point in favor of taking something else - in my case, this was me trying something a little different, and it was not nearly as fun for me as I had hoped. But your mileage may vary, of course.
Rating: 3 / 5Difficulty: 2 / 5Workload: 10 hours / week