I wanted to like this class. There are hints of potential everwhere. I even learned a lot during this course, and gained a basic functional understanding of C++. But this class was awful. I used to provide technical instruction to adults professionally, and I have mentioned elsewhere that I would have been fired for administering a course like this.

The class materials take you through introductory C and C++ concepts, and the labs have you write short programs using those concepts. It's all well and good until you get into the course details. The assignments are built badly. Many comments are about the awful instructions, and I completely agree. The assignment instructions are incomplete and frequently in conflict with other provided instructions. There are literally instructions that say things like, "Ignore the second statement in the lab manual." and do not specify what the statement actually is, or what to do instead. Here's a thought: Update the lab manual to just be correct in the first place. The manuals are dated from the mid 2000s. Are you telling me this course has not undergone academic review for almost 20 years? How can ...read more

I only had one interaction with Prof Indela over Zoom. She seemed reasonable and took the time during the session to explain some things that I was confused and incorrect about. It is hard to comment further because there wasn't any other interaction. She did post to the class discussion forum a few times, once the class had essentially gone off the rails and students were complaining. I am speculating, but I got the feeling she was preoccupied with other duties that kept her away from managing the class. In the end, professors are people, too, and I feel bad writing this. I hate to say it, but I would be unlikely to recommend this course or professor, at least at this time. Prof Indela, if you read this, I recommend fighting to get this course updated ASAP, recording new lectures, fixin...read more

Avoid for now, take it at a community college. If you can self-teach you will pass, so don't worry. But you won't enjoy it.

Be ready to teach yourself - I managed to learn C++ basics, but this was hands down one of the most poorly designed and administered classes I've taken through ASU online. Can't believe I paid this much to watch 6-year-old prerecorded lectures that are freely available on the internet. The textbook readings rarely matched what you're expected to know on the exams. It's truly the Frankenstein's monster of classes - disconnected lectures, readings, labs, and exams all crudely sewn together and somehow brought to life.

The labs could've been solid practice .At their core, they actually helped you learn. But the directions were a mess! The wording was often vague and confusing, made even worse by grammar errors everywhere. Half the labs didn't even have rubrics when we started, and when people complained enough, they slapped together some last-minute rubrics that didn't even match what the assignment directions asked for! It's like they couldn't decide what they wanted us to do - were we supposed to follow the original directions or these new rubrics that came out of nowhere?

Communication in this class was a complete train wreck. The professor kept herself at arm's length - offering just one office hour per week, conveniently scheduled on the same Fridays our assignments were due. pretty helpful for working adults taking an online program, right? It took weeks of confusion before the TAs finally gave out the professor's email address - something that should've been right there in the syllabus from day one. If you needed help understanding anything, you were just pointed to these Friday office hours that most of us couldn't attend anyway. I'm not saying all the course problems were the professor's fault, but the bare minimum of communication would have been nice.

Take the class with literally any other professor.