BURK! Man I miss this guy. Crappy lecturer; great for non-intro classes. Lectures not mandatory, interesting and advanced weekly projects, no exams. You WILL get stuck & have to wait in a long line of people looking for help, but it's worth it — I got 3x better at coding!! RN I'm in CS32 Nabeel (textbook word hunt only) bored out of my skull.
I had him for both CS 16 and CS 24. CS 16 had midterm and final and I believe they were both poorly written and were difficult. On the other hand CS 24 had no tests and the grade is just nine lab assignments. The labs are difficult but I highly appreciate how there are no tests. He is very passionate about material but the assignments are hard.
Burk is very passionate and caring. It was his first time teaching the course, and while the structure was not the best, he made a lot of compromises to help out. A lot of people are mad cuz they're bad. Only group projects, no tests. Start early, and ask him questions. Spent >20 hours a week for the first project but I learned a lot.
Not like a traditional class, no exams just all labs. The labs will be difficult so you will have to earn your grade but the guy is always accessible and for help and OH will save your grades
Difficult labs, be ready to go to office hour and using gpt
100% of your grade is on how good you are in coding. If you miss the lectures, the README along with each lab gets you up to speed - if you learn fast. Lectures are interesting! If you get stuck, Kevin, the TAs, and Piazza definitely help. Don't forget about valgrind if you're stuck with segfaults! Definitely one of the professors of all time.
This was supposed to be an intro C++ and even joked about it by having our first assignment be Hello World but then it exponentially got more difficult and by the end we were doing such time consuming and unnecessarily difficult projects that took up all of my time. Exams are awful and shows he doesn't know how to properly test comp sci knowledge
Kevin's CS16 is not really a "Intro to c++". His lecture is awesome, teach you lots of stuff, that is, if you know what he is talking about. This course will be hard if you are inexperience with programming. Lab work is hard, requires tons of time, but really fun. If you like computer science, you will enjoy this course, vice versa.
This man managed to make an introductory CS class into a part time job, only take if your other classes are easy so you can an insane amount of time to finish labs and prepare for exams.
Prof. Burk's lectures feel very unrelated to the labs he assigns-- which are a TON of work btw. He assumes you already have a basic understanding of C++ which is quite tough as a class that's an intro to C++. You don't need to attend lab/lectures. His lectures are tough and he focuses on computer memory a lot rather than teaching you how to code.
This man is absolutely legendary. A lot of work is needed but the projects are so fun to complete. The best thing is that there are no written assignments, no exams, just coding. His CS32 class was great as well. His assignments are creative as well(other than fibvec lol).
Prof. Burk is an excellent, passionate lecturer! He went out of the curriculum to teach us cool stuff like hacking! Attendance isn't mandatory, but I'd recommend you come to lectures. People complain that he only grades on projects, but isn't it good that we have no tests? Plus, he's really lenient (extra credits, TONS of extensions). He's great!
Every time I take a class with this man I am so conflicted. I spent probably 30 hours a week on our first project because it was so unrealistically, unbelievably hard. However, I had to teach myself an absurd amount of material to do well in this class. He is zero help, and I would never take a class with him again, but I did learn a lot lol
Prof. Burk is a very strong programmer, but a very average lecturer. He often doesn't talk about things relevant to the projects (the only thing you are graded on). OH were often so packed it was hard to get help. Be ready to learn from documentation.
Graded only only on diffecult group labs that are build on one another. Gave many extensions. TAs don't help at all. The only help we got was from Burk and Tianle on piazza. They need to get this guy on the teaching staff for this course fr. He actually knows his stuff.
Kevin is super sweet, he always stayed overtime during section/office hours to help. The labs were difficult, and the fact that the TAs did not help made it worse. None of them ever truly helped during office hours or Piazza (except one ULA). A person who was actually taking the class was much more helpful.
This class is group lab based, you will get an A if you do well on the labs. Kevin is always super helpful and caring and nice and smart and understanding and stay late in section and OH to help. BUT the TAs are not helpful... especially jason li. he started not coming to office hour and section in-person just to avoid helping other people....
Kevin Burk is an amazing prof open to helping and extremely passionate. But If I had one thing to say, some of his TAs were quite useless. One in particular was Jason Li; he did not provide any useful advice when it came to coding. He would host Zooms remotely but I had seen him in person just an hour later. Strange, isn't it? -3 stars for Jason
He was always very nice and willing to help anyone stuck on the projects. However, the labs while working in groups made it very difficult. He pushed deadlines but most struggled to finish on time or at all. The game project was pretty fun and easy though. Lectures were unrelated to the labs. TAs were useless on piazza and during section.
Best prof ever. Super enthusiastic and engaging. I've never learned more from a class. Also had him for cs32 and he was great.
Be ready to grind the labs and that's it! Go to office hours and Kevin is always really helpful! Gives a ton of extra credit so don't worry about your letter grade!
G.O.A.T. Take him if you can you won't regret it. Labs can be hard but are definitely doable. Will learn a lot! Teaches you to be a real programmer.
Kevin is my favorite instructor at UCSB by far, he's so caring and is eager to help his students. He even stayed until 9pm one time during section to help our group debug. I learnt a lot from his class, you need to be on top of the assignments to be able to complete them but if you attend office hours and get help, you will be fine.
Burk is an incredible professor, def one of my top 3 at UCSB. His style is unconventional but I really like it; I enjoy coding and feel like the assignments teach me a lot. I also do like his lectures; if you actually try to follow what he is doing they are very useful. He's such a cool guy and very approachable. It's sad how much people complain.