Elizabeth Sklar

I have to dissagree with what other majors have been saying about this course, if not what they have been saying about Professor Sklar. Professor Sklar is the nicest person in the world and will do everything in her power to help you if you actually go to her. She is pretty quiet, and won't come to you, even if she thinks you're doing badly. If seek her out though, I have never seen a professor go to such lengths to help her students. She even has an aim sn just to help students on the nights before big assignments are due. She is usually a little bit late everywhere but she's a fine lecturer and presents the material she has to present clearly (ps people complaining about her writing code on the board a lot, all of the code up there is usually on the website). The class however, is a complete nightmare. None of the annoying weekly labs are that hard, and the homeworks are definitely resonable, but you switch languages every week. I suppose if you really know you're stuff (ie you've programmed in pretty much all of the languages others have mentioned some before) you can skip a bunch of the lectures and labs and do fine in the class. However, even if you're a major, if you're just taking the class right after 1007/1004 you're going to be in pain (even if you did well, I got an A in 1007). And looking up syntax/googling everything for all of the assignments all all the time. Th…

Nice person and nice teacher. Her method of teaching involves going through slides on the projector, and making frequent extra notes on the board. Cracks jokes frequently, and gives the class a very relaxed atmosphere. On Halloween, she played Shrek on the projector and gave out candy for all of us. I definitely recommend her.

Professor Sklar is a wonderful teacher--extraordinarily helpful and kind and a clear lecturer. However, Advanced Programming does not live up to expectations--it's more of an Intro to Programming in Several Different Languages (and it may even be easer than 1007). It doesn't go enough in-depth into the subjects it covers, and the assignments aren't especially challenging. Covers basic C/C++, PERL, PHP, and Unix tools.

As compsci professors go, Sklar is a pretty good one. She's got a sense of humor that keeps things somewhat interesting, and helps make the material a little less dry. She speaks softly, so sit towards the front. Her understanding of the material is very good - her lectures might be boring to non-geeks, but she explains stuff very precisely and everything's in a logical order. Available help for her classes was very good, and she was even pretty flexible about things like late homeworks. It gets a lot worse than Elizabeth Sklar.

This semester, we were told that the course was to be "watered down." I see that all of the other CULPA Advanced Programming reviews talk about how they always had to Google stuff, but I only had to Google stuff once in a while. We covered C, Perl, PHP, a little UNIX/shell scripts, and C++. I had lab in 9 in the morning, so I would cut it often, but going to them makes you get the labs done faster (for the same reason you get HW done faster at a library). The course is not curved, but that's a good thing; I think the average is around an A- (although no A+'s are given). I'm glad I didn't have to constantly Google stuff like the previous reviewers did, but the class was still -literally- a waste of time. If you can get notes (and if you can't, there are abbreviated versions posted online), and lab handouts from a friend, you'll do fine by attending neither lecture nor lab. The lecture does not teach you anything you can't learn by reading a handout.

Prof Sklar was pretty nice and understanding... I was sick for the midterm, and she actually had multiple makeup sessions which made it really easy for me. Her lectures are quite organized and easy to follow along, and she makes a good effort in keeping the class awake. The homework is easy until like the third/fourth one... I felt a bit lost at the end especially. The TAs try to give partial credits which was helpful. An advice: learn to use debugger (Forte or JBuilder)! cuz the cunix system only gives you syntax error, and if you're stuck somewhere logically, then good luck trying to figure out the problem. She won't talk at all about debugger, but I really wish she'd told me earlier! Midterms (multiple choice, T/F, and coding) and Final (all multiple choice) weren't too bad if you know the basic stuff. Overall, not too bad of a class.

This class wasn't too hard, but BEWARE if you're not a cs major. I thought I was doing OK throughout the semester, and I got quite a shock when i received my final grade. the class was not curved AT ALL. If you don't REALLY know your stuff, you won't even get a B in this class.

Prof Sklar's class wasn't boring at all. She was aware of that some students in the class had minimal programming background, so she tried to accommodate them. Her lectures notes, which were put up online, were extremely useful (as a summary, of course, because lectures were much more detailed) when it came to exam times. She's really into robot soccer games, so many assignments had something to do with that theme. As othere reviews said, first midterm was unbelievably easy, and most people didn't even finish the second midterm. She admitted that she only wanted to make it harder than the first one, but overdid it. Overall, a good class to take especially if you have limited programming background.

As much as people may say that AP was a disaster from the start because the CS dept messed it up, Sklar did not in any way help the situation. I learned absolutely NOTHING from her in this class. She wasted half of the class time writing code on the board, which could have been printed or posted online to the same effect. The rest of the time she read her useless slides, which were posted online. The best thing to do was to skip all classes and learn any new material by searching for it on google.

Prof. Sklar's class was by far my favorite of the semester. Easy to understand and very helpful, she was also reasonable especially when it came to homework extensions. Even experienced programmers will learn something in this class, she tries to make it interesting (whether or not she is sucessful depends on who you ask.) Her exams aren't too difficult, if you go to lecture and do the homework you will get an easy B+ in this class, at least.