2.4
Quality4.2
Difficulty23%
Would Retake116
Reviews23%
Would Retake
116
Reviews
Rating DistributionOfficial
116 total ratings5
29
4
8
3
8
2
13
1
58
What Students Say
“Gives hard bonus assignments to improve our already terrible grades”
COMP302 - 2.0 rating“COMP 302 was tough and the entire course was tough”
COMP302 - 1.0 ratingClass Info
Online Classes
100%
Attendance Mandatory
44%
Textbook Required
21%
Grade Predictor
Your expected effort level
Predicted Grade
B+
Grade Distribution
Common Tags
Rating Trend
Declining
-1.73 avg changeRatings by Course
COMP426
5.0
(2)COMP523
5.0
(1)COMP527
4.5
(4)COMP
2.3
(3)COMP302
2.3
(105)Difficulty by Course
COMP302
4.3
COMP523
4.0
COMP527
4.0
COMP
3.7
COMP426
3.5
Reviews (115)
very good teacher ... if you are interested in logic, type systems and programming languages theory, do take her courses.
Great teacher! Super organized and clear lectures. I think it's one of the best teachers in cs!
Very nice, always willing to help. She is enthusiastic about her work, and has great expertise in the course content.Good class, lots of assignments
Good teacher, she taught well and introduced both the basics and more advanced topics. She kept the class well paced and entertaining.
One of the most helpful profs outside of class. She will sit down with you until you understand. Do your work though, she doesn't seem to like people that don't keep up with the class
Good prof with very clear notes. Teaches well and enjoys the field she teaches. She is also easy to reach outside of class and fun to talk to.
Very interested in what she teaches, but does not explain what's its practical use. Assignments and Exams are hard. Harsh on partial marking
Seems nice enough at first, but her assignments are terribly hard, and she doesn't curve the grades at all, which makes for really bad averages on her classes and not much possibilty for getting a better grade. The class itself is frustrating because SML makes doing the most simply programming tasks ridiculously hard.
Her assignments are difficult and she tends to gloss over material that is tricky. Also doesn't teach SML syntax well. That said, she is extremely nice, extremely helpful, and a good lecturer. She was fairly generous with assignment marking in terms of part marks as well. I'd recommend her classes; they're tough but worth it.
She is an *amazing* teacher. Also she is one of the most intelligent individuals I have ever seen. She really knew what she was talking about..absolutely *no* questions stunted her--she also would always stop in the middle of her sentence to answer questions. Lastly...she is one attractive woman, and a big part of it is how darn genius she is.
Helpful & clear. Not an easy class but it's because of the contents of the class, can't really blame her for that
This class is insanely difficult and I would advise anyone to stay away from her. Assignments were brutal, long and even when you got the correct answers, you lost points if it was not 100% her way. Prof code always has bugs and she doesn't it announce publicly when pointed out. Harsh exams and unfair grading.
Would have rather taken the course with Prakash. But she knows her stuff and the notes she puts online are great. The assignments are tough but super interesting (for the most part). She's really friendly and is fun in class. The course seems like Comp 202 for functional programming at times.
Clearly has a passion for what she's teaching. Assignments are usually difficult and long but the tests in comparison are fairly simple. She's very thorough in class and does her best to engage the students. I would highly recommend her to anyone thinking of taking a class with her
Prof Pientka is an amazing lecturer. Her explanations are crystal and she is very thorough and specific in going over all the requisite material. The assignments can be hard and gruelling, but you will learn a lot and maybe fall in love with functional, as I did, or hate it. She has a flare for teaching that is unparalleled by other Comp Sc profs.
Prof Pientka's exams are brutal. Assignments are painstakingly long and difficult. Lectures don't convey the material well in my opinion. I had to teach myself the whole course to pass. If you really have to take 302 with her, I suggest only going to the review sessions and studying on your own.
One of the better professors I've had in CS at McGill. She really knows what she's talking about and is quite helpful in office hours. Not an easy class and the assignments are brutal. It took me a while to really "get" functional programming but once I did, I found it really fascinating.
She is a good teacher and she has a hot style.
Take her class if you already know how to code in a functional language.
Brigitte's notes are accessible and helpful. Complete life saver for assignments. Brigitte's teaching style is gripping, and she knows how to make the material interesting. The worst I can say about her is that she sometimes forgets what it's like not to know something, but on that point she's no worse than any number of math and CS profs.
Prof Pientka cares about students, gives good notes/examples, but also forgets what it means to learn something new. Getting used to functional programming (OCaml) can be a major challenge and the assignments are difficult, taking a long time to code to work properly. Exams can be tough but fair. Overall it is not an easy class and time consuming.
Intelligent and passionate professor. The course is a great brain exercise. She focuses on algorithm and understanding. A few trivial things, like basic syntax, aren't the main focus, but responsible students should easily get them. This makes the course interesting since time is spent on algorithms that require deep thinking. Brigitte is the best.
Homeworks are hard and long. Tests are easy. Study well and you can get an A. If I had to nitpick, I'd say Professor Pientka sometimes forgets what it is like to not understand... If you ask a question that she thinks has an obvious answer, she'll act kind of mean about it.
You can see how much she loves what she does just by listening the her. How intelligent and knowledgable she was amazed me every lecture. However, sometimes this makes her unable to explain things clearly. Assignments are hard, exams are straightforward. Class is hard overall, but it's probably because of the topic.
Horrible professor. Doesn't even care about her students. Act like she's really nice in class, but she's a mean person in private. Don't take her class. Worst prof ever had.
Very tough grader and unfunny / dull lecturer - her assignments are ridiculously hard for being worth 1%, and her midterms have sub 60% averages, with material taught by a TA who couldn't even operate the screen (she didn't ever teach it herself and it was worth 30% of the midterm).
She seems nice in the classes. But brutal when it comes to grading. She said the 10 1% assignment will be "small" which is far from truth. An assignment that takes you 6 hours is not small. The midterm had material which was not taught, the TA's notes are not intelligible, and he was supposed to explain in the class but didn't know how to teach.
I spend more time on this one class than on all my others combined. We have one "mini" assignment per week which counts for 1% but takes more time to complete than my 250 assignments which are given 2 weeks to complete and count for 10% each. Midterm average was a C because 30% of it was though by a TA which gave up in the middle. I wana die.
Avoid. 13 ridiculous long assignment. Each worth 1%. : )
really hard course if you are new to functional programming.
13 assignments per semester!! The midterm has has one question which is taught unclear by TA and it worth 30%. It seems that the 55% average of midterm make sense. Also, The assignment after the midterm is very difficult and takes you more than 5 hours and all the assignment worth only 1%. Just avoid it.
Midterm is ridiculous. 32% of the midterm which is 8% of overall marks of this course is taught by one of the TAs. He apologized to all the students for the bad-explained content. And Professor Pientka still used this part as 32% of Midterm. And there are 13 assignments worth 1% each which are ridiculously long and hard.
TOXIC ASSIGNMENTS. TOXIC MIDTERM. DONT TAKE 302 WITH HER.
Hmm well she has good lectures tbh but she is kind of mean sometimes. I got this impression because she said "she is smarter than you" to my friend who was asking for a curve on midterm (she was referring to another unspoken girl in the same room). Besides, she gives hard assignments (one percent each) for granted. Idk what to say.
At the beginning of the term: Oh the prof is so nice! At the end of the term: She beeping beep beep beep beep beep!
The professor is fine, just too much work to do. The midterm is very difficult and worth 25%
Ocaml and functional programming are amazing! I enjoy this course. The work load was really low. The lectures were easy to follow and understand. Praise the SUN!
I almost want to give her 5 score for her excellent performance in last class. Her try to be nice, but it was too late. I keep rational and calm down.
From my experience 10 assignments counting for 10% is usual (at least in maths). The lectures along are not sufficient for good grades, but if you really work the assignments out you should be understanding the concepts pretty well, so no need to do extra revision. You need revision for finals in other courses anyway so I don't think this is bad.
She is the best prof I met in the cs department so far! She is not mean at all and is super nice and helpful in her office hour and anytime you ask her a question!She does her job to explain concept clear. Homework is very interesting and not that difficult as somebody thinks, but the premise is that you need to take comp302 seriously.
She is the best prof and really stimulates my passion for computer science. She is super nice and kind and good at making jokes. The homework and midterm are not that difficult as someone thinks, and the content is way interesting than your expectation! OCaml has become my favorite language thanks to comp302.
It just fit someone who has experience and high interest in learning programming language. Her assignment is too difficult as well as midterm
She is amazing and really patient. She has fantastic teaching skills and always come up with jokes and creative homeworks.
I took 302 with Pientka last year. The knowledge about functional programming is so inspirational and mind-blowing, which is also quite useful in the higher level cs courses. Just because the avg for the midterm was low does not mean she should've curved the grade up as you like. Just drop it if you don't like 302 instead of complaining about her.
She taught Church well.
Prof Pientka's midterm are difficult. Assignments are painstakingly long and difficult. Lectures don't have recordings. I had to teach myself the whole course to pass. Just don't take COMP302 with her.
Just don't take comp 302 with her. As simple as that.
Assignments and midterm are unnecessarily difficult. I among others have not felt like we have learned sufficiently about programming paradigms or languages especially Church at all.
She never answers questions on discussions board.
Assignments are really tough.
Pientka says she won't be posting past final which is the best way for us to get to know the final when contents are so blur for now, THANK YOU PIENTKA
She's a fine lecturer but her midterm seem to be written with the intent of being as difficult as humanly possible. It may be easy for some intelligent students. But in general, I will not recommend anyone to take COMP302 with her :(
Worst professor that I've ever met at McGill. She has useless lecture slides and boring lectures. She is not friendly at all. Never mind the slander and libel. Learning OCaml is worst choice I have ever made.
No matter think she is good or not let me State Some FACT 1. 13 Assignment. Each 1% for final!!!! Much heavier than other CS course. 2. 55% avg for midterm. No curve up! 3. 3 Bonus credits through assignment. But it consumes you much time !Really Hard 4. If ur midterm grade not goodand ask her questions, she is not patient and dislike u. She like
Calm down. Maybe she wants us to re-do Church next Fall.
Calm down, let's fight for the final by OURSELVES!!!!!
Pientka is great, she is always happy to answer any questions you have, and she cares about student feedback in order to improve the course in the future. The course was difficult and a lot of work/time for three credits, but asides from the church encoding fiasco, she was an excellent, fair teacher. TLDR- Tough exams, lots of work, but great prof.
Sad to see the low rating. Her course in OCaml was definitely the hardest I've taken so far, but also the most interesting/in-depth/insightful course. It makes you think, HARD, but leaves you with more respect for the field. Crib sheet won't save you though, just practice lots and do your homework. Also she's a feminist and a pretty cool prof B-)
She's probably the most controversial teacher I've ever met. Pros - Prof has a fantastic personality - Her textbook is neat Cons - Hardest COMP course so far - Exams are hard for the sake of being hard - Very difficult to reach outside of class
Learn it in winter, it will be more helpful.
Functioning programming language is hard U don't want to take this course Can never imagine how I passed this course Keep doing the 1% assignments on your own or you won't pass
Really difficult final, as well as midterm.
Worst class taken in McGill. Really hard to get an A.
Finally, it's over. I will never use OCaml again.
Midterm and final were difficult but the biggest problem was there were vague questions where you weren't even sure how to start even if you've been paying attention in class and understood the material when it was presented. Like Church.
Gives hard bonus assignments to improve our already terrible grades. Takes it all away in less than 2 minutes into the final. That cheat sheet was meant for us to wipe our tears.
COMP 302 was tough and the entire course was tough.... Avoid at all cost
I absolutely did not mesh with the way of thinking presented in the course, and I despise OCaml (which she tries to sell at every opportunity) but she's not a bad prof by any means and definitely doesn't deserve the hate. Know what you're getting into and take it with someone else if it's a mandatory class.
There are better profs to take comp 302 with.
Prof. Pientka is one of my favourite professors at Mcgill, and by far the best comp lecturer I've had. Her lectures are amazing! Comp 302 is not an easy course, i found it really abstract, especially for the higher order functions part.
very good prof with interesting material. really got me interested in the functional programming paradigm.
Very good prof. Like all classes, you have to work hard to get an A. But honestly, her class was fair and well taught. Her lectures are great as well and she's very accessible outside of class. Overall great prof.
Avoid
Assignments are hard but exams are reasonable. Prof. Pientka is really helpful in her office hour.
Professor Pientka makes a very abstract topic accessible. I found assignments difficult, but exams were reasonable and in line with the course material. Be careful if you tend to get distracted in class; there are very few resources online so it might be difficult to catch up/figure out what you missed.
She's a good professor. She cares about her students, but sometimes she is not the best at explaining concepts. The material involves lots of practice to understand. The assignments were quite annoying because you either knew it or you didn't, there was no middle ground.
Worst professor
You feel like a god when you solve her assignments. Before that though, you were probably consider dropping out.
First course failed in mcgill with this dude, extremely difficult assignment and exam, CGPA from 3.6 to 3.3, thanks god I retake it from parkash finally get an A on the same course to save my GPA a little bit.
She will expect you to master the material and then crush you with the toughest grading you have ever encountered. Miss a single character? Lose all marks. Answer a question right, but not how they wanted you? Miss all marks. She will also end the material midway through the semester, spending the other half "teaching you" how to do a prog language
Very hard class and tough, usually unfair, exams as described by some of the other comments. Final Project is a huge struggle.
Terrible prof, she makes her work unnecessarily difficult! I took this class during the Covid-19 pandemic and thank god she restructured her grading scheme without that I would not have passed. The only friends I knew in this class were people that were repeating it since they failed the first time they took this class with her
She'll keep repeating that she expects you to spend 9 hours/week on her class when, in reality, unless you're a functional programming ninja, you will likely end up spending much more with surges at bad times if you want to do well, hurting your other classes. In the worst case, I spent 3 days on *one* question from one of her *weekly* assignments.
Avoid at all costs, 4 "quizzes" were essentially midterms, graded harshly, assignments were incredibly time consuming
Confusing. Hard. Harsh grading.
bad prof and class combination. take 302 with prakash if you can
Worst prof in comp sci at McGill. Confusing book. Need to study 48 hours per week to get an A.
She fails horribly at explaining abstract concepts, and on top of that, the textbook is confusing
She provides inspirational materials and the story line of the course is very well-designed. You will learn many important aspects about logical systems and their meta properties.
Terrible course structure and teaching style, would not recommend anyone take 302 with her, or really any course. She reused recordings from last year instead of actually teaching, giving a very unpersonal and careless feel to the course. One day a week we didn't have a real lecture, and it was "live coding" -- completely useless
She made the class extremely difficult. The bi-weekly "quizzes" are extremely difficult and require the full three hours every time, even though the are supposed to take an hour. The final quiz average was a 66%. The final project takes a very long time. You put a lot of effort into the class and you get very little in return. DO NOT TAKE.
Terrible professor. Comp 302 is the worst class I have ever taken.
Prof Pientka doesn't deserve the hate. She explains the material really well. I loved this class and it was by far the less time consuming comp sci class for me during my semester. But I definitely would not recommend this class for everyone, I feel like it's either you get it or you don't/ have to spend a lot of time grasping the material.
This course has the lowest return on investment in terms of studying and assignment completion. Assignments take too long and are worth too little, and are graded in an obscure manner. The final is 45%, so make sure to waste your time studying a useless programming language you will never use again.
Absolute drain of my soul. This course is not worth 3 credits. Huge workload with each assignment taking over 12 hours to complete. Worst part her lectures are absolutely useless to solving the assignment and I had to rely on the lecture notes from the equivalent Cornell class. AVOID UNLESS IT IS A REQUIREMENT. If you take it be warned of the work.
Brigitte is very smart, clearly knows the course well, and wants you to do well. Unfortunately, she is so focused on the material that she neglects you have other courses, giving very difficult and long assignments and expecting mastery. She also doesn't give good feedback when grading, and makes the final project or exam a pass/fail. Avoid.
Dunno why people are so negative. She's honestly very good at explaining the course content, and the online format worked very well for this course. The assignments were occasionally a bit too long, but overall very helpful and interesting. Final was fair, though be sure to practice ahead of time since there's lots of small programming questions.
Wow what a condescending person. I had an advisor meeting with her and she just would not give me advice. Instead laughing at the courses i've chosen, and still not giving any advice. If you dont want to give advise, then dont be an advisor...what a sad excuse for a human.
If this was a course review, I would give a hard 1. Still, I have to salute Prof Pientka for her way of teaching. She is clearly a professional and one of the best in her domain. She made sure to provide many examples for the concepts presented, and her book provides good insight too. Available outside of class and responsive on Ed.
Pientka doesn't know how to weight assignments. The HW assignments are worth 1-3% each, take ages (at least 8 hours), and are pass/fail (85% pass). The term project was only worth 9%. Good lecturer but forgets you have other classes. Graded mostly by exams, which are reasonable difficulty (I did terribly but that was because I didn't study, so).
Writing this while stressing out about the final tmr, don't get why hours of assignments only worth 1% each. Review session (by TA) was SUPER unhelpful. Did I mention a weird group project with code + report + video presentation worth only 13%? Def the worst class I've taken in 4 years
Doesnt post enough material online, extremely big workload and bad at explaining. Avoid if you can
Pientka doesn't deserve all this critisism - she deserves more. Assignments were long and hard and each worth 1% (except the last one worth 3%). As other have said, theyre pass/fail. We had two midterms which were both hard (class average 67 and 62). We also had a group project worth 13%? which included an oral?, report, video? and ofc code. AVOID!
The grading policy feels harsh as homework scores below 85% result in an automatic zero. There are too few practice exercises and they lack depth, with no solutions available. Exams are disproportionately difficult. Challenging exercises during practice, rather than on exams, would improve learning in my opinion.
Avoid this professor! She didn't give us access to past midterms/exams, and, even worse, refused to provide solutions to the practice problems for the midterms and final. The only way to pass the class is to pass the final, which she made very complicated and borderline impossible within the allowed time frame. It's like she wanted us to fail.
I hated this class, she is not good at teaching the concepts and how to program. Her exams are graded very harshly and not comparable to what she gives for practice. She also GATEKEEPS the class from you even though you're literally in it. She won't post the solutions for the homework, blank midterms, answers for the practice problems or midterms.
Avoid at all costs. Wish I could elaborate more to make it more clear why for those reading this, but I can't even articulate the degree to which she ruined my semester. She is extremely rude in the way she answers (or refuses to answer) questions. I know 302 is mandatory for CompSci and SoftEng students so just pray it switches back to ProfJake.
This class used to be online, and she has all the lecture videos from previous years. For some reason, she decided to GATEKEEP the class instead and didn't allow lecture recordings and didn't post the videos that she ALREADY had. But when the classes were online, she was so quick to cancel the class and upload the videos from previous years. Avoid.
this class burned me out bad! I worked more on this class than all of my other 4 classes combined. She never posted the answers for parctice midterms or finals, the solutions to the last 3 assignments were posted THE NIGHT before the final. She's very knowledgable, but man this class drained me. Also, very weird grading scheme. AVOID!
The grading scheme for this course is a bit messed up, its incredibly discouraging knowing that you are spending hours on assignments that are pass/fail and worth 1% of your grade. The requirement to pass the final exam to pass the class had to be removed and the final was curved!
There isn't much to add from the other reviews about her. Very hard grader and a rude teacher to students who have trouble understanding concepts. Would avoid her at all cost.
If this class is optional, consider switching, if this is a mandatory class ... well good luck, you will actually need it. She is a tough grader, hard assignments. The lectures were not recorded, and the in-class slides were almost never posted afterwards. And when the slides were posted, they were blank since she would rather write on the board.
302 is a difficult course with new concepts, and you have to be on top and ensure you understand. 302 is simply not a class that you can just "grind out" you need to understand the concepts. I felt whatever I didn't learn from the lectures I was taught in the homework. Prof Pientka's exams were always fair, as was the grading
Insane time-consuming homework: our last hw assignment (2%, individual) was to make a functional prog. compiler in OCaml, which was the ~15% FINAL GROUP PROJECT from 2 semesters ago, almost word for word exact (per my friend whose final it was). Reasonable exams though (was about failing, saved it w the final). Hardass, respect her but never again.
She's quite strict and not very understanding. Even though attendance isn't graded, missing class still affects your marks. Her lectures were dry and hard to follow. For our final project, she kept questioning our topic and pushing us to adjust it, leaving little time to study her materials, then criticized us for not going deep enough.
Class Info
Online Classes
100%
Attendance Mandatory
44%
Textbook Required
21%
Grade Predictor
Your expected effort level
Predicted Grade
B+
Grade Distribution
Common Tags
Rating Trend
Declining
-1.73 avg changeRatings by Course
COMP426
5.0
(2)COMP523
5.0
(1)COMP527
4.5
(4)COMP
2.3
(3)COMP302
2.3
(105)Difficulty by Course
COMP302
4.3
COMP523
4.0
COMP527
4.0
COMP
3.7
COMP426
3.5