Barely speaks English. Tests and quizzes are unreasonably hard for the amount of time given.

The worst prof of my entire post-secondary experience, and the only prof I have had more than once. Lectures and online notes are basically useless. Assignments and exams are long and often painful. The material is reasonably interesting, but be prepared to learn it on your own.

This Prof cannot teach, I cannot understand him and his class has no logic

One of the worst profs at the U of A. Terrible, boring lecturer, and does not help students at all. This is one of the hardest classes in undergraduate computing science and he will not help you at all. Assignments and tests are ridiculously hard. Avoid this prof at all costs if you want to pass this class. What a joke.

His assignments are very poorly worded and he's a very very hard marker. If you can avoid taking his class do so at all costs. The textbook was necessary to pass the class.

Awful professor, nice guy and all but terrible teacher. The exam he gives are hard not because the material he gives is tough but because he does not teach it. At all!

I recommend you to attend every class(I never missed one). He tests on small stuff (sometimes unexplained). Read the textbook and do the questions too. Be sure to not to miss labs or assignments 'cause that would just give him an excuse to change your letter mark 'cause "final grades subject to minor changes that take in multiple factors". Poor me

I was feeling he was talking to himself during the lectures.

Extremely unclear instructions and guidelines for Assignments. You basically learn this entire course using the textbook and YouTube so attendance isn't mandatory. I'm confident he does life saving research for this University because he is so terrible at teaching and they haven't removed him from being a instructor yet.

Drop this course and avoid him like the plague. You will regret not dropping out of his class.

Tests are insanely hard. Hard to understand the lecture because of the accent and also the fact that he doesn't seem to be prepared to teach and has to double check his own thoughts. The the lecture notes posted are also next to useless.

One of the worst professors I had experience with at UoA. His notes are unorganized, his accent is unbearable, and in general he just does not know how to teach. He makes simple things hard to understand. Finally, he design exams as if it's a Advanced Programming course.

His lectures are hard to understand because of his heavy accent and assignments are vague. The final exam was insanely hard, like you are expected to write out code for certain things that are like high level C programming. The final exam killed me, even though I studied hard, weeks prior to this exam. There was little helpful resources on eclass.

Probably the Worst Professor I've had. He's so incompetent that it almost feels like he purposely makes badly formatted tests on stuff he doesn't mention. His preparation content was BAD preparation for his exam as he makes you prep for something, and proceeds to test on another DIFFERENT thing he mentioned, or did not mention at all.

Gives really difficult exams. Doesn't explain concepts clearly. Expects you to teach yourself the course. Pretty much what you'd expect a really bad CS prof to be like. Avoid at all costs.

Lectures are non-linear and often not aligned with lab work. Doesn't really explain anything meaningful. Better off skipping the class and teaching yourself.

Very bad professor! Run away fro him as faster as you can.

I'll try to explain in as few words as possible: 1) worst prof ever. He teaches minimum about a difficult topic but asks difficult question in the lab assignments. 2) Study on your own if you want to pass NEVER EVER take the course from him. 3) Doesn't have a clear definition of what he wants in the assignment. Will give mostly vague answers

CONCLUSION: TRY TO AVOID HIM! His lecture is extremely fast. Learned little from lecture but textbook. Some lab and assignment descriptions are ambiguous. He gave us so little time for the final assignment, I stayed up late for a week to finish it, but he extended the due date when it's due for lab machine error, but actually this doesn't matter.

The worst CS prof yet. Shame on UAlberta. The course is unorganized and of no industrial use. The course is not well designed and prepared. All the assignments labs have almost no connections with C language. They are just about data structures and algorithms. The course is not a intro couse but actually the implementation of C204. Just avoid him.

i've had a lot of bad profs in 6 years, yet somehow Lin still managed to leave me speechless. Nothing about the course material is inherently too difficult, yet he manages to make it impossible. The course is so undirected, the labs took me on avg 9 hours, and the assignment specs are so vague that it is unfair. I can't say enough bad about him.

He made lab instructions so vague that nobody knew what was going on. No test cases were given at all, and the TAs were even confused. For the last assignment, he told students to resubmit after the due date since some lab machines went down, and then an hour later said "I take it back". This isn't pre-school, there are no take backs in University!

Easily the most disorganized prof i have encountered. Assignments are very hard. Most of the labs are pretty straight forward and some are pretty diffucult but made more dificult by his unclear specifications and lack of explaination on the subject matter which applies pretty much to all faucets of this class.

Coordinated CMPUT201 for my semester. Horribly organized. Half-way through the semester, he sent us all an email saying that they were going to change how the lab assignments were being graded. No explanation as to why. Labs come from the textbook, but halfway through the lab, the TAs tell us to do it in ways the textbook doesn't mention.

Lin is just an all-around terrible prof. He lectures out of the book but manages to do so in such a fashion that it's impossible to understand, he is more interested in defending his ego than teaching his students, and his marking is arbitrary and bears no resemblance to the course objectives. I cannot believe the department hasn't stepped in yet.

Quizzes contain many trick questions, majority of labs were all difficult, if not extremely time consuming. Lectures were useless, learned more reading the textbook 2 days before my final than I did watching a semester's worth of lectures. Content isn't hard but the prof overcompensates by giving hard assignments that are incredibly time consuming.

He is better suited as a Cmpt204 prof he is not a bad person but his desires to produce high quality software devs makes him lose focus of his primary goal of being an instructor and teaching, classes have syllabuses and topics meant to be covered he tested different from the material he taught and penalised students for a decision he made.

Labs were unnecessarily hard, a lot of them were similar to hard problems you would be solving on leet code. The labs asked to solve problems in a way that they wouldn't be solved in real world applications, so it was less practice on the things we are being taught and more of a test to see how you solve hard problems. Just pointless.

Discussion board was full of people asking what the lab instructions meant, because they were worded so vaguely. Labs were also very difficult, same with the final.. like chill out its only an introduction course to C dawg

I found this class SO HARD. the final was insane and so was the homework. The practice quizzes and midterm were okay but made up so little of the grade. The last few labs were so hard even the TAs were confused, lectures confused me even more so I just read the textbook. If you don't already know C to some extent, don't take this class with him!!

His lectures are extremely bad, he does not teach anything. He does not have lecture slides. Sometimes it is very hard to understand him. All knowledge comes from labs and quizzes. Still as this class is curved, it was not hard to end up with A+ without any problems despite doing labs and quizzes.

Lectures were incomprehensible, and the lab instructions were a nightmare - vague wording and bizarre implementations. Some of the weekly labs were just downright insane, taking 10+ hours alone. They got so bad he just outright dropped a few towards the end of the course. Our final average was around 38%... great course you're teaching there.

He is a tough grader. He gives lab assignments before even teaching the concepts that are used in the labs; he teaches those concepts after the due date of the labs. The lectures are boring and hard to follow, and his lab assignments are graded very inconsiderably. The e-class format is very bad. Overall, choose any other professor if you can.

DON'T TAKE THIS CLASS WITH THIS PROF!!! The course is an intro using C programming.. however its taught as if we have 10 years of experience. NOT ACCEPTABLE.

This professor is just awful, doesn't give extension no matter what the circumstance is. His accent makes this course even harder. Labs take forever to complete and not to mention the topics used in the labs are taught once the labs due date has passed .His quiz and tests are awfully hard as well .

I found the course really hard as the professor was running behind in the lab work. As the labs for different sections were due at different times the lab which was at the end of the week had an overhead advantage of attending more lab sessions than the one that was due at the start of the week. The labs were too long.

The lectures are about basic stuff, but the labs are super super hard. Lectures are not helpful at all, you need to be good at googling to finish the assignment. The average for mid-term is 55%, and it explains something. Then he made the FINAL super super super challenging. Just choose another professor.

His lab works are insanely hard, you will never learn from the lecture, but only by yourself to learn all the skills you need to finish the labs.

DON'T CHOOSE THIS PROF!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Rudimentary examples in class that don't help with homework. Assigned reading only helps up to a point, spent a lot of time searching for things on my own. Labs take forever. I'd appreciate some extra practice to understand code, as that helped a lot in 174,175. Be prepared that whatever practice final he gives isn't representative at all.

you have to be extremely attentive at every moment of class to understand what he is saying. His poor English skills mean any explanation he writes, whether its for a lab or for an email explaining how the final will be, are some of the worst explanations possible. He does seem like he cares though he is just an awful teacher.

Just so bad

Drop this course if it is not a requirement for you, his final exam and last 5 quizzes are going to kill you!!!

This class is ridiculously hard for an intro to C class. The labs have very poor instructions and will be graded very inconsistently. The final and midterms have extremely low averages, and the professor doesn't care enough to make the tests doable. Also, the labs start getting very difficult midway through the semester.

-Terribly organized, every assignment had to be altered after being posted. -Awful, waste-of-time lectures that do not prepare you for difficult and inconsistent assessments (quizzes, midterm, and final). -Lab assignments are on different days for everyone. There are bonus marks available, but they are complicated to get and terribly explained.

The labs made for this course were much more difficult than the content learned in class and relied on concepts in other courses that were not prerequisites (CMPUT204, CMUT229) and were also extremely time consuming (spending around 15-20 hours per lab). The professor was also very rude and unaccommodating to student needs.

Guohui Lin seems like a nice guy however, he is not a great prof. The labs were not only very difficult, but unreasonably long (~15-20 hours) especially considering how many there where throughout the semester. The lectures were hard to follow and felt all over the place. He was, for the most part, fast at responding to emails and active on discord

The first few labs were ok, but then suddenly they got extremely difficult. Every lab involved having to spend hours, just to google how to do it. The knowledge required to complete the labs is taught the week after. The final was excessively hard (the written portion's average was 26%). A class shouldn't have to be scaled to get majority to pass.

Very below average teaching style and has no respect for any of his students. He is unwilling and very stubborn. I hope that you do not have to take his course.

My main complaint in CMPUT 201 was that the labs were too hard considering the material was based on content in the next week and he has very little patience for students that don't meet his expectations. The final exam is also challenging, with an overall 26% fail/drop rate at the end of the semester. I would not recommend taking a class from him.

The course structure was bad. Having labs due on different days and then teaching the content for the lab the week after it's due meant the professor was useless and you had to self teach yourself way too much. The labs were also too hard and took too much time. Also, had to do 30-40 pages of readings each week too cuz the lectures were very light.

This was the worst class I've ever taken. I learned more about C from an Assembly course I took afterwards. Lectures were BRUTAL and the assignments were so hard the TAs didn't even know what was going on. He doesn't really teach, people who already know C get As, everyone else tries to learn from the textbook and suffers don't do this to yourself!

He is hands down the worst professor I have ever had studying at UofA. His lectures are useless as his strong accents make it so hard to interpret him. The labs are super time-consuming and his lectures contribute nothing helpful to these labs. You need to spend your own time googling and doing labs. Midterms/finals are super hard.

Prof. Lin has a strong accent which makes it hard to follow him in class. His midterm/finals are super hard, practice questions are not helpful at all. Labs are hard and time consuming, you need to spend lots of your free time searching up concepts he never mentions in lectures. Avoid this prof at all cost.

Do not look at some of the 5.0 ratings. they are spammed by prof lin's 'fanboys'. He makes a simple intro C class into something that is literally unapproachable. Avoid him like the covid19. Like come on dawg it is a intro C class only smh.

As the one said below, Guohui's fanboys need to stop. He is an awful professor who has a problem comprehending him orally. Avoid him at all costs.

I don't have a driver's license, but I want to get one so I can drive to university without a seatbelt and get into a car crash after looking at the midterm class average of 52%

This professor does not know how to teach an easy class. Learn on your own. Do not waste your time trying to understand his nonesense. His labs are irrelevant to his classes. His tests are irrelevant to what he teaches his class. You can barely understand his accent. Choose another professor instead. Don't even think about taking any class with him

Dawg instead of posting about how he could improve on easing the next midterm blud is talking about badminton in the discord lmfaoo I'm so dead

You are a beginner swimmer in a 2 meter pool with a lifeguard without a certification. You drown because you did not only know how to swim right, but because the lifeguard was the reaper of souls.

This creature broke my heart. I thought I like men, but I cannot C the hole because I am blinded by all the hairy things that this creature is pointing me towards.

You can't pass Lin's class because no one knows the answers because he can't teach! Bring a pillow to class so when you lose consciousness, your head wont slam on your desk. And bring a pillow for your pillow because your pillow will fall asleep too. I eventually passed this class but I had to sacrifice monkey to the voodoo God Chiango to pass it.

useless for all the beginner in C unless you have learnt C language before, even a person who have a sufficient skill in C will not barely get a decent score in the exam. And there is no monitor that everybody has the chance to cheat without getting caught.

The man told us that the midterm would be closely related to the practice midterm and weekly quizzes. Yet when I and some friends opened the exam, the test was almost nothing like anything covered in the midterm prep material. It caught me completely off guard. Also didn't finish the exam because we had 1 min/ question.

This has to be the worst professor I have ever had. He shows genuinely no care to help his students learn and does not create a positive learning environment. He not only chooses ta's who use profanity to verbally attack students and their work, but also disregards questions he recieves from students. He over all does not explain his content well.

Straight up the worst prof I have had yet. His lectures are super dry and not very helpful. Expect to learn everything online or by going to Henry Tang's lectures. There are LOTS of labs and quizzes. He claimed he is being "generous" so our tests are worth less. Note that there are two midterms (10% each) and a final weighted 30%.

The teaching methodology, or rather the lack of it, is a puzzle in itself. Professor Lin's approach lacks structure and clarity, leaving students adrift in a sea of uncertainty. This absence of guidance is not just perplexing but also disheartening, as it fails to foster the intellectual curiosity that is the hallmark of higher education.

Didn't go to class because I didn't learn anything in his lectures. He seems like a good guy but his teaching is garbage. Therefore I did most of my learning online and through the textbook (which is actually quite useful). Although, CMPUT 201 did have a good team of TA's this time around that were willing to help.

Does not teach well and is very irresponsible

Guohui Lin is a nice guy, but his lectures are not useful. Labs are insanely hard ranging from lab 8-13. Midterm is brutal, finals are alright but depends on versions. One version is literally the same as the practice questions, rest are hard. I don't recommend taking but i don't think there are any other way since he is the one that make exams.

bad, too bad, no curve

Terrible

ahh this dude, where do i start

If you are unlucky enough to take 201 with Lin, go to Henry Tangs lectures. Lin is super hard to follow and I found Tangs lectures to be so much more helpful. The exams are cruelly difficult without reason, but at least Tang doesn't shame his students and make them feel stupid like Lin does. There's a reason why Tangs section has higher averages

All the homies hate Guohui

All the homies hate guohui.

had this class in the morning, then would go work at a restaurant in WEM for 8-10 hours after. the class was the worst part of my day. and life. i suspect lin gains greater power for every tear shed by a student in this class. that's why hes been around the school so long, he's gained immortality from harvesting the broken dreams of CS students.

not enough time

AVOID AT ALL COSTS. His lectures make no sense, me and my friends cannot understand anything he says. Be prepared to teach yourself everything. He also enjoys challenging his students by giving unreasonably diffcult in class coding exercies that he knows half the class will fail.

Go with henry tang if you care about your gpa and your money. this guy makes his in-class codings difficult for no reason

Awful, horrible teacher. Very hard to understand, and the material he teaches is completely different from what's on the tests. You're better off skipping his lectures (as many did) and relying on the textbook to teach you instead. The class average is currently a 35%, I'm not kidding. Just an atrocious prof.

Worst ever

Never seen such a bad prof ever. Teach the basics and ask you to write questions like LeetCode within 25 minutes. Give tricky questions for exams and quizzes. Very limited time for all course work and exams. Labs are insane.

Absolute MENACE. Reviews don't lie. Guohui is knowledgeable but that doesn't mean he is qualified to teach. Decades of teaching but his English is still incomprehensible. Lecture notes are filled with questions never answered. Use Tang's notes instead. Insane 25 min weekly in-class codings. He is friendly, but if you care about your GPA, RUN AWAY!

Terrible prof, take Tang if possible. An introductory C course shouldn't have a class average of 40%; if he does boost grades then it's just a testament to how badly the course is designed and how little Lin cares. If you get the whole idea of an in class coding correct but you don't pass the testcases during class, you get 2/10.

Insane difficulty for a 200lvl course. The avg score was so bad that even a 50 is considered good. Teach basic C programming and require you to write LeetCode questions within 25 minutes. The labs are also insane. No one is going to take this course if it isn't a prerequisite for many.

CMPUT201 itself is very time consuming and hard, but Dr.Lin makes it worse. You might have some trouble trying to understand him in the lectures, and the in class codings in his sections is unreasonably harder than other sections. If you want to take this course, take it with Henry Tang instead.

CMPUT 201 is a difficult course but Guohui makes it much worse cause no student can understand what he's saying. He has extremely unreasonable exams and expectations. Regardless of what anyone says, in no universe is an 8/45 class average on a final exam written acceptable for any prof. Is he nice? Yeah. Does that justify any rating above 3? No.

Today's lecture time is 25 mins, followed by in-class coding. You will be writing the C code for landing the Apollo 13 lunar module on the Moon. No arithmetic; only bitwise operations allowed. Your file should be no more than 30 lines, one statement per line. There are 10 testcases to pass. Lastly, no memory leaks or your mark will be halved.