Horrible lectures, confusing assignments, stay away or you will be sorry!

teaches from powerpoint slides... lectures aren't helpful at all

hard prog assignments that req'd a design doc in advance, if you get a good TA, they might be doable. lectures = PPT slides; =( tests are super long(!!!) and there is no curve; fairly harsh grader, too. likes to talk about current compsci events, but this does not help you with the material.

This guy should've gone into industry and stayed away from teaching. Why UCSC hired him, I don't know. Mostly blabs about stuff not related to class material. A jerk in office hours on a few occasions, even though I was prepared and asked good questions. Appears lazy.

Not recommended at all.

Spends about half of each class talking about class rules. Decent teaching, but it's so hard to get through all of the useless things he says. Very condescending and grades quite unfairly and sporadically; doesn't seem to want you to succeed. High opinion of himself and pretty rude to students. In four years at UCSC, perhaps the worst prof I had.

Outright worst professor I have ever had. Interacts with students in as very rude, unprofessional and unproductive manner. Lectures are very bad. Assignments are very unclear and office hours are very overcrowded and quite useless anyways. He deducts regular points from the actual assignment for issues with extra credit. AVOID HIS CLASS IF YOU CAN!

Terrible. Worst professor I've every had. Rude, condescending, unwilling to help, impatient, unclear in lectures, and unfair expectations for an intro programming course.

This man had no respect for his students, nor any desire to see them succeed. Lecture had very little to do with the assignments, so they were almost impossible once we went offbook. Good TAs can only do so much when the entire class shows up at section. In short, this class is beyond unreasonable, and Miller himself is rude & condescending. AVOID!

I think Ethan truly believes that he is teaching the right way and that he isn't doing anything wrong but he is so out of touch with reality and has no understanding for his students that he is is a very bad professor. I strongly discourage anyone from taking a class with him. Our entire class has problems with him and he takes no responsibility.

The WORST professor I have EVER had. He's rude, condescending, unhelpful, and should be avoided by EVERYONE. CMPS 5P was supposed to be an introductory class - no computer science experience necessary. He ruined it by giving us unnecessarily hard projects due every week, topped off with a required field trip and an essay to accompany it.

Absolutely terrible professor. Not helpful, condescending, had the most difficult and unclear assignments ever, and took off tons of points for minor mistakes. He has a cheating policy which pretty much prevents you from talking to other students in the class, and the overall environment in the class is not conducive to learning. AVOID THIS GUY!

Easily the hardest 'intro' class I've ever taken. I have no programming background and was recommended to take python. Horrible mistake. I had to go to almost every office hour section because the class prevents you from working with other people. If you're a newbie to programming, avoid this class: either learn python on your own or take 5J.

Miller: Condescending, rude, conceited, unapproachable, overweight Programs: unnecessarily difficult, long, almost unrelated to lecture/book Computer Science is another language. If he were Profe Miller, you'd learn 20 vocab words in Spanish and then be asked to write an Epic. If you take this class you are allowing this to happen to yourself

Professor Miller is an obviously intelligent individual with a great hold on his specialty. That being said he has no place teaching an intro course. He has very little respect for people learning this because he is well past it and considers anyone struggling to grasp new concepts which are easy to him idiots.

If you see this professor's name as the teacher for ANY class, ABORT MISSION. Awfully condescending, rude, very unclear in assignments and unfair testing criteria. Don't do it. Just, don't.

Professor Miller is undoubtedly intelligent and knows what he is talking about yet the extreme difficulty of the assignments coupled with his paranoid and over the top attitude concerning academic dishonesty prevents a constructive learning environment. Frankly, I am astounded he is still teaching this class as it was by no means "intro" level.

First, this was not an intro level class. Assignments are ridiculously time consuming/difficult. Miller is very intelligent yet very unapproachable, conceited and rude. He prohibits students working together and uses fear tactics to prevent cheating. Very poor learning environment. You will learn but I don't think it is worth the stress.

Miller is kidding himself if he honestly believes this is an intro class; the assignments were extremely challenging, and on top of that, he prohibits you from talking to other students. Miller is extremely rude, condescending, and assumes you are an idiot if you find something to be confusing or you need help. NOT a healthy learning environment

He graded students on 9 extremely lengthy, overly-challenging assignments, and the midterm & final exams. Even though I worked harder than I ever have in any class, I received low grades throughout the quarter. He makes it impossible to learn, doesn't explain the material enough, and expects everyone to know how to code without working w/ anyone.

Anyone can teach the basics to programming, but the hardest part of any programming language isn't the language, but the logic. Professor Miller could not teach this logic. I routinely left class early because I knew it wouldn't be beneficial. Everything I learned was from outside research. 2 years of prior experience in CS and I barely passed

Professor Miller is absolutely terrible in all facets of his craft. From extremely difficult assignments to the point of ridiculousness, to a condescending attitude on a daily basis, Miller makes CMPS5P a horrible experience. I shared many laughs with friends and experienced programmers on the sheer difficulty level of the many assigned projects.

I'm in his class right now and I already agree with everyone who rated him for CMPS5P. The assignments he gives are absolutely ridiculous; he does not teach us the things that need to be learned in order to do these questions and they're incredibly lengthy and challenging. Do not take this guy if you have an alternate choice.

For the most recent assignment he had us pretend to be RISC V processors and diagram a 90 cycle assembly language program 3 times. If you have not guessed there is no real way for a human to complete this without a single error. Ethan does not have realistic expectations of his students.

Avoid him at all costs, listen to the reviews. I tried giving him a fair chance but this man is the worst professor I've run into so far. He'll spend more time being paranoid about you cheating / posting his slides on CourseHero than actually being at all helpful.

omg, the cm110 class is so crazy under him, the most recent homework is absolutely unable to finish within the time he gave to us, plus, most of the materials used in homework is not fairly covered in his lecture. I spend over 20 hours to do his homework and still not finished . I think he expects too much from his student.

Only one rule Avoid him at all cost.

Worst professor at UCSC. Doesn't give the proper tools for students to succeed, makes it unnaturally hard for students to learn. He won't post solutions to homework because he's afraid someone will post it online or something. I have no doubt he's really smart, but his class is sometimes so insanely hard, very demoralizing for cs students imo.

I do not recommend taking any class with Prof. Miller if you are not the type of person who likes cramming - not because of procrastination, but because of how much he expects you to know in the short amount of time he gives you. No feedback, late homework grades even though graders are done grading, no accessible hw answers, no practice exams.

I did okay in his class. He was hard, but it was more his attitude. He always talked down to you. For me, I only understood what he thought of me after I ready his blog. Read his post on anchor babies.

Pros: does his best to create a fun classroom environment smart guy with field knowledge Cons: paranoid about cheating to the point that it hinders the class very disorganized attendance is mostly required lectures aren't the best (slow, gets sidetracked, confusing explanations) homework guidelines are confusing

This class with Miller will seriously mess you up mentally and physically. Will lose lack of sleep due to the insane combination of homework assignments and programming assignments given. Does not provide enough examples in class and expects you to do problems on the homework that is beyond the understanding of what he discussed in lecture.

This Prof creates the most toxic learning environment i have ever seen. Its ironic that his cheating paranoia and disorganization actually motivates a lot of students to cheat. Miller is clearly intelligent, but he should have stuck to industry and stayed out of the classroom.

Arrogant and discouraging

Gives a boatload of homework, impossible to keep up with it. Great lecturer, though. The homework's just too much. Feels like he covers too much ground to study for finals.

Very Arrogant and discouraging. Has a power struggle with students and decides that everything he does is right and everything he assumes about you is right, for example a quiz that only has access for the beginning of class proves you were there for the entire class. Won't negotiate, will bombard with accusations until you crack.

This is one of the worst professors I have ever had. He focuses more on catching students cheating than lecturing the material. Very disorganized he often has to update the assignment throughout the week often making students redo work they have already done.Assignments are 3 weeks worth compressed into one with vague instructions/ strict criteria

fine teacher, but a horrible course. He teaches a difficult subject, but that doesn't mean it validates long, difficult, high-expectation, weekly assignments. If you choose to do the assigned reading, you won't have enough to time to complete the assignment; but if you skip the reading to do the assignment, you won't know how to do the assignment.

Hard assignments, not much time given with barely clear instructions, the assignments themselves take so long to understand, and sections are not helpful. Also, there are in-person quizzes to check attendance that are part of our quiz category, which doesn't make sense. Yes, it's a weeder class but it should never make students feel helpless.

Worst professor I've ever taken. Barely teaches the class, lecturing about topics either vaguely related or completely unrelated to the assignment. Spiteful and unsympathetic. Expects the section leaders and tutors to teach the class for him. Workload is unmanageable, haven't had spare time in over a month. I am severely depressed.

His assignments are difficult and time-consuming, and his lectures are very dense. The quizzes are of medium difficulty, but the workload for the class is a lot. He is also very unreasonable and rude, and he is oddly obsessed with catching cheaters (even going as far as to set up trap pop-quizzes for them). He also grades harshly.

Assignments are ridiculously hard, but not impossible. Although he's retiring, this curriculum will still be a part of 13s, especially for those taking it with Long. About the professor:If there was a mistake made on the professor's behalf, then he still expects us to be perfect. Expects his TA to be hardworking although they already ARE. Not fair.

People are not kidding when they say CSE13 completely destroys your mental health. I spent so much time working on assignments for this class that I literally felt myself physically declining. I lost so much weight due to not even having time to eat because of how much work this class has. Also, lectures are COMPLETELY unrelated to assignments.

Miller is snarky, has a temper, gives unclear grading criteria, and leaves you in the dark for the assignments. While I did learn so much, it came at the expense of my health utterly plummeting. Everyone was getting 4 hrs of sleep and working on homework for 60+ hrs per week. Worst class I have ever taken. I somehow grew grey hairs at 19 years old.

Miller didn't design CSE13S or get much time to prepare for it. The course was so hard I lost weight and spent whole quarter depressed because I was constantly working. I traded knowledge on C for my mental health. That isn't entirely his fault, but Miller was still condescending and cynical. I'm glad he's retiring; he doesn't care about students.

Doesn't care about students. Too focused on catching students than teaching the material. I did terrible in this class. I learned more through the TAs.

Enjoyed watching students stress out and cry. Every week there was something outrageous happening in the class or on Discord. Rubric was unfair and was harsh on everything. Withheld resources to make students' lives harder. Would have tantrums. Did everything in his power to fail people. I always felt distress just doing anything CSE 13S related.

just coming back to write a review because I'm still immensely traumatized by how horrible this class was. #neverforget

Do not take

He is openly a pro-zionist who gets in political arguments with students on reddit. A man child of a professor.