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Awesome class! Material was challenging, but not too much so. Extremely worthwhile

There was a lot of difficult material but this class was the best way it could've been taught.

Fantastic course. I especially loved the "hard" labs (hashing, heaps, etc) since I love spending time thinking/coding, although I didn't particularly enjoy long post-lab reports (8 and 9). I didn't mind the shorter post-lab reports. I really enjoyed having Bloomfield as a professor. He's a great guy and knows what he's talking about. Hopefully he'll be teaching in more of my CS courses in future semesters.

This should be a 4 credit course. Then I might feel a little less bad about all the work.

Very difficult. Don't f*ck around. You will be left in the dust. Otherwise, great class.

The Labs really helped a lot. There were also a lot of outside resources that were made available that helped me to follow along and learn a new programming structure or language (the tutorials were really helpful). I can only say I wasn't thrilled about the write-ups but realize they are necessary.

Hardest class I've ever taken. Overwhelming at times because of the constant stream of assignments. I found the midterms to be much easier than the labs and actually looked forward to midterm week so that I wouldn't have to do a lab. I think the class was definitely worth taking, but I sometimes wonder if the amount of work we had to do was really necessary to understand the material.

Professor Bloomfield was clearly very familiar with the subject matter, and very good at explaining/lecturing. He is also very dedicated to his students and teaching. I really enjoyed the class, and learned a lot. However I thought that grading was somewhat arbitrary; sometimes I got marked down on something when I had demonstrated that I knew the material.

This class was a lot of work. A major issue I had with the labs was even once I grasped the materials I would get stuck and waste time on the extra part of the lab. Especially with labs like the hash lab. I put 55 hours into the lab that week, around 30 of it on the pre-lab, but felt I understood hash maps well before I was finished with the lab. It got to be a bit frustrating to do the labs when I grasped the course material but still wasn't receiving grades that showed that and was putting so much time and effort into each lab. Lab 6 was not the only lab where I felt i ran into problems like this. I also felt the same especially with lab 2 and lab 10.

This class should be a 4 credit course. I know that you (Prof. Bloomfield) have very little control over that, but the amount of work required was equal to or greater than those 4 credit courses I have taken. Regardless, now that I am at the end of the semester and I can see the light, I have to say that I feel extremely well prepared to progress with my CS studies. This course was rigorous, but teaches the necessary problem solving and coding skills required to advance in UVA's CS curriculum. Things to improve: Many times, I was frustrated with the convoluted information provided on the lab assignments. 5 pages of information that may or may not pertain to getting the lab done is unnecessary. In the future, please provide an itemized list of instructions for the lab somewhere in all of the other information you provide for those students who don't need the extra information. Please make office hours more efficient. (REDACTED) I also suggest not having the office hours in stacks, rather reserve a classroom so the TA knows how many people are waiting.

Very difficult and time-consuming course, but still fair, and I learned a great deal from it. Maybe a few extra hints in the labs could help with the large number of hours spent on them.

Lectures were both entertaining and informative, so I never felt like my time spent going to class was wasted (this is something I unfortunately can't say about all my classes. *cough* (REDACTED) *cough*) Grading policies, homework policies, and just about all other administrative stuff was also very clearly stated, so the class schedule was very predictable (this matters more than you might think and can be extremely frustrating if not done right/at all... *cough* (REDACTED) *cough*). On a side note, I would have voted for Bloomfield for ACM Professor of the year, but he wasn't on the ballot (I guess he already won last year). So, I've decided to withhold my vote as none of the other CS professors I have had this year deserve the award nearly as much as Bloomfield. My only criticism is that Bloomfield occasionally oversimplified certain topics and sometimes misspoke (Contrary to what was said in lecture, Java does NOT use reference counting!) However, I doubt many noticed, and he never placed emphasis on these little side-notes of the lectures.

While this course was very challenging and some labs took a substantial amount of time, I did learn a lot, and looking back I don't think that there was too much work assigned. Professor Bloomfield is an awesome professor and is really great at taking the time to make sure we understand topics. He is obviously very devoted to making the class as enjoyable and bearable as it can be for the students.

i loved this class :)

I learned a lot in this course.

Most assignments were manageable time-wise, however there were a few (hash-tables, and I had a problem with the huffman encoding) that I spent a lot of time working on and ended up with something less than the complete. I think this is just a consequence of the nature of the assignments further along in the class, where they are supposed to be less guided and more autonomous. Overall, this was a great course. Professor Bloomfield was very knowledgeable and always ready to answer questions, even though students were rude on the anonymous feedback. I learned a lot and feel comfortable moving on to higher-level computer science classes.

This course was worthwhile and I learned a lot. They only thing is that it should have been at least 4 credits, seeing as I did more work for this class than any other class I have ever had. Also, the class should not focus on some of the less useful topics, such as emacs commands and objective c, because there is already a large amount of material to learn in this class.

This course was awesome! I learned so much and actually had fun doing many of the homework assignments. There was a lot of work, but it was manageable. The lectures were organized well, although you could go a little too fast at some times. My only real complaint about this course has to do with the grading. I felt the grading was much to strict with respect to the ambiguity in the problem statements. A couple of examples: I got an 8/10 on one of the assignments because in my output I used an int instead of a double. That is saying that 20% of the assignment was outputting an int instead of a double... which it clearly is not, as it was one line of code. While this was a mistake on my part not yours, I felt that the penalty was too harsh. On another assignment, the IBCM prelab, on the sum program the requirements say that: "# If the sum is zero, it prints the three values and stops # If the sum is not zero, it starts over (tries to get three values, etc.)" So I thought that meant if the sum is zero it prints out values, and if the sum is not zero, there is no output. "If this do this, else do that". I got a point taken off for it. I clearly knew how to print out values, it is just a matter of where I place my jump statement. Now you may say, well thats only one point, no big deal. That is one point of 10, that is a 90%, the lowest A- grade there is, and my program worked. And its not like these problems were infrequent for me... They start to add up. I really think that you should make the grading either more lenient, or make the grading out of 20 points, or take off half points for miscellaneous errors such as this. I just do not believe that the grading accurately reflects how well you accomplished the assignment. It came to a point where I read each assignment 10 times, ended up overthinking some of the statements, and made changes that ended up making me lose a point... I shouldn't have to be that paranoid about submitting working code. Along with this, I have heard that some students just spend enormous amounts of time in office hours just asking "Hey TA, is my output exactly right?" Until they get it perfect. It shouldn't be about who spends the most time in office hours... I should be able to determine by myself exactly what output you are looking for. Every single program I submitted worked to the best of my understanding of the problem statement, but many times that wasn't good enough. Sorry if I sound like a spoiled 6 year old, but I just thought the grading was unfair. I'm in a fairly good position to get an A in the class, depending on how well I do on the final... But it was just awful to have to be so paranoid every time I was finishing up an assignment, and it was frustrating when I got points taken off on assignments that I truly understood and spent large amounts of time on. Like I said I enjoyed many of the assignments... until it came time to read the assignment 10 times and check every little detail only to still get points taken off for little reason. Please consider half point deductions for small mistakes instead of 10% deductions, or just make the grading more lenient when there is ambiguity. Again it was a great class thank you!

This course was very difficult but I feel I have learned more from this course then any other course at UVA.

The lab descriptions need to be organized better because it is always hard to see what you need to do specifically for each part of the lab. The objective C tutorial is so horrendous(confusing) makes me want to cry. Need to cut down on the amount of work given ie: labs, because this is a 3 credit 2000 level course. And since most people at uva are taking at least 4 or more classes, no one has time to spend 20+ hours on your class (mostly labs). Besides that you're one of the most organized teachers in UVA and having all the resources available makes your class a lot easier to take. Just mainly fix the labs!!!!!

This should have been a 4 credit class. 3 credits is inconsistent with the amount of work assigned and the lab section.

Good course. Not a big fan of some of the test questions that seemed to rely on rote memorization, but I'm not clear on how to make that much better either. All in all enjoyable. Not nearly as difficult as it was rumored to be.

It's a lot of work, but that's fine. The only issue I had was the post-lab reports, which in themselves is an okay idea but I don't feel like I've solidly learned anything after completing them. There should be some form of follow-up to them to make sure that we learned what we needed to know. I'm sure that I've got a few misconceptions about topics that were covered in the post-lab reports but I don't see how they will be corrected. In short, I would prefer an "answer key" almost to the post-lab reports, or rather, a tutorial I guess that can be optionally completed afterwards. I really enjoyed the class however, I enjoyed doing the pre-labs a great deal. I only find it difficult when things are very open-ended and I don't know where I should start, but that's going to happen in the real world anyway so it's better to get used to it now than later.

I won't lie, this class was a lot of work at times, but because I'd heard this class referred to as "C++ Hell" before I enrolled, I was expecting it to be. That being said, the subject material was taught well and explained thoroughly, and I learned a lot. It was a worthwhile course.

This was a great class, and I'm glad I took it. Many people think its really stressful, but if you like the material, I found that I didn't have to stress over the hours some assignments took to complete. However, the assignments where long write-ups were involved for the postlab assignments were the worst. Often, I felt as if I wasn't learning and was just writing about whatever I thought I saw (most of what I wrote seemed wrong to me, anyways) and adding a few screen shots here and there. That's the only place I'd make an improvement; the general consensus I've found is that we like to code a lot more than write, and would rather prove our work through coding than writing essays. But like I said, the class was great, and I'm really happy I took it.

Great class! Extremely helpful for programming!

Great professor, terrible work load, great class

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Best--and hardest--class I've taken at UVA. The work was worthwhile, though, because I always felt like I was actively learning something. Not a course for the faint of heart.

Fun class. Disappointed in all the reports on trivial material. Really like the challenges like the word search and hiffman coding.

The thing that makes Bloomfield probably more effective as an instructor is he is receptive of students. Unlike say, a certain somebody who I'm pretty sure everybody is aware of. Maybe its because Bloomfield is more education oriented than research, but its hard to say. He is also willing to learn to improve his course than say, that certain somebody again who (REDACTED) and frankly does not care whether or not his methods change for his students. Overall I think that Bloomfield expects much out of everyone, but the thing is that it may be because he wants to show by example, considering he gets little to no sleep by spreading himself too thin over all the stuff he does. I just hope once he gets tenure, he doesn't lose his way, cause that would be a real shame. He is certainly close to completing this evolution towards becoming the best CS instructor with his methodology towards CS programming anyways. Maybe not quite the concepts, but the exhaustive coding/do it yourself is better than having partners that leech off others. Which is the E-school's way of saying work together by looking at other people's source code, which is why I'm in the college. Some gripes: I was not really that mad at the workload, because I was reared in a lower middle class family and have been doing manual labor since I could walk. As my parents told me, you sometimes don't learn unless you suffer. That being said, I gave upwards of 30 hours or so each week giving my all on these labs, and to watch people look at other people's source code for inspiration which I spent much time agonizingly pondering techniques, I would say its wrong. But Bloomfield's policy is stern, but looking at source code for inspiration makes you a weaker coder, maybe you'll get better grades, but it is what it is. Another gripe: I understand he wants us to attend class on Fridays, which is why he makes a lateness penalty if it is turned in after 11 am, but that's sort of unnecessary, as he didn't even take attendance for participation, so he could have done away with that. Or it might be because he wanted people to start on the following weeks lab, but in that sense, who's to say you can't do both? Why a penalty? Also I wished he did take attendance participation because frankly I showed up every single day thinking he secretly did, only to be fooled when I could've spent that time working on other things and then looking at the lectures on-line.

The course was hard, but I learned a lot. Prof. Bloomfield was honest about the amount of work and was very fair when something didn't work the way he intended it to, such as when part of a lab was more unclear than he thought. I feel that I learned an amount proportional to the hours spent on work for the class.

This is one of the most well-structured courses I've ever taken. The material is quite challenging and time consuming, but teaches a lot about computer science. The labs are put together in such a way that one really learns about how to learn to program; I feel that the approach I learned here will help me learn other languages and larger tasks. Professor Bloomfield's lectures are fantastic as well- I was genuinely disappointed when there was a canceled lecture. They greatly increased my understanding of the material and were fascinating to boot. Many computer science professors know their stuff but can't explain it to a crowd the uninitiated for beans. Professor Bloomfield is not one of those professors. The workload is a little absurd, but anyone taking this class knows that going in; it works well as a make-or-break computing major course and as an introduction to real computer science issues. All in all, this was a very worthwhile class. I learned a lot about the principles and day-to-day practice of programming and how to think about the way computers represent and manipulate information. This is primarily because professor Bloomfield structured his assignments (and his course in general) as well as he did.

Bloomfield's Goku-like swag enhanced what could be a rather mundane course to a completely bearable level. With a proper time commitment that can easily stretch beyond ten hours a week, the fruits of your labor will bear the heartiest and juiciest of results, namely, the "success!" of a proper submission compilation.

Some of the questions on the first midterm were poorly phrased and I felt some of the grading was unfair. The second midterm was much better. Professor Bloomfield is a great lecturer and he obviously puts in a lot of work into teaching the course. Some of the homework/labs were a bit frustrating and time consuming but I found I didn't have too much trouble. I feel much more confident in C++ now (I had learned a bit in a summer course a couple years ago and absolutely hated it).

I understand that your philosophy is to kick our butts until we actually learn everything, but the amount of work we put in over the semester for 3 credits and not much of a curve is absurd. You're a great teacher though.

Great course!

This course is very hard. It requires a lot of time

Good course.

Best professor ever!!! Best CS class ever!!! You should make the tests harder though...

Amazing class, amazing professor teaching the class. Coming in considering myself a strong programmer, I found the class lab assignments engaging and fun, although some of them were difficult and required time. I ended up doing very well on the final, so I am writing this on a good note. Nonetheless, I do find some of the grading a bit expedient. Although I appreciate receiving the grades fast, I've definitely spotted errors in grading that are too simply to not be clumsy; hopefully just something to keep out for. Nonetheless, a great class and I enjoyed the semester. Now if only the class was four credit hours!