The course was originally supposed to include (mostly) weekly labs (weighted in total 20%), five assignments (pass/fail, weighted in total 20%, best three of five counting toward the final mark), and a final exam (weighted 60%, must pass the final to pass the course). This changed partway through the course, so the grade for assignments was just our single best assignment mark. Those assignments felt absolutely brutal. The labs were super easy though, and you could either go to the lab and get the mark from the TA or just submit the lab online. The final exam was absolutely atrocious. It really heavily focused on one specific part of the content and was way more difficult than anything we did in the lectures. It felt a lot like the assignments, which I don't think were a reasonable difficu...read more

The course introduces C++. It's a lot less comprehensive than CSC 111, in the sense that there's no way a prof could possibly cover everything C++ has to offer the way you can in CSC 111 for C. What is covered is sufficient to give you a decent grasp of the language though. Based on what I've heard from working engineers, this course will probably be a useful foundation for skills I will need in the future, so while it hasn't been useful yet I expect it will be.

Teseo was really funny and definitely cares that his students do well, but in practice is a bit of a disaster. His lecture style was pretty similar to Bill Bird's, so the lectures themselves were alright. His organization, however, was near non-existent, to the point that we ended up having one less assignment than we were supposed to and the last two assignments were due on the same day, on the day of the final exam, because Teseo just kind of forgot to give us the first assignments at a point in time that would leave enough time for all of the others. It also took forever to get marks for the first two assignments, despite numerous complaints about the issue. He also kept telling us that he wanted marking to be fair and that he felt bad the final was worth so much, but decided he didn't ...read more

Do all of the assignments, even if they won't all contribute to your final grade. Do all of the lab exercises, even if you don't have to. Do all the lecture examples on your own outside of lecture time. Do literally all the practice you possibly can, because there's just so much stuff and knowing it all well enough that you can do well on a hand-written exam is very, very important.