Prof. Nichifor is a very nice instructor and the content of the course is pretty good as well. However, the curve is very harsh.

Your grade in this course heavily depends on how your classmates are doing. Thus, I would not recommend taking this course during autumn quarters because there will be many smart people who used AP to skip 124 and 125, this will make the curve very very bad. I got the same percentage score as my friend with the same instructor (she took it during spring), she got a 3.5 and I got a 3.0...

Professor was nice and had good officer hours. but the class is presented in a terrible way that is hard to follow.

Good content and professor. Difficult exams and harsh curve. Requires a lot of effort to get a good grade because of the curve.