This course works on paper but fails in practice. You are placed into groups at the beginning of the semester and work on one project - HotStone - for the entirety of the course, making incremental changes every week or so. If your team happens to be composed of people who struggle with programming or people that don't give a sh*t, tough luck. I didn't enjoy it. The latter-half of the semester was a drag, and I found it increasingly futile to try and complete a project that was doomed from the start. My team was dysfunctional for most of the semester. It wasn't until the last quarter that I saw some noticeable progress.

There is an emphasis on test-driven-development (TDD) throughout the course. We learn several design patterns, but we do not typically apply what we learn (on our semester-long project) unless it is to complete homework assignments or answer exam questions. I doubt I am going to retain a surface-level understanding of such patterns in six months, so I don't believe it was very useful.

He's knowledgeable about the subject material and has plenty of experience in the software engineering world, but he does not have the capability, as an adjunct prof. with a full-time job, to devote his full attention to this course. The lecture slides are taken from someone else, and the examples provided on the slides (to explain new concepts) are contrived and boring.

This course is relatively easy. If you're a CS major looking to pad your schedule, have interest in the subject matter, or want an easy 300-level elective for your BS (as opposed to graphics), take this course. Be warned, however, that unless you make it a point to actively teach yourself outside of class AND take on the lion's share of the workload for HotStone, you probably won't enjoy it or learn much.