I have had better.

He make the final so hard that is nothing like the sample final given. His lecture is really boring. You have to learn most of the stuff yourself. He never mark any stuff, the TAs does it all. But some TAs didn't even take this class before and was unsure what we learned and what we didn't learn.

Almost everything you need to learn on your own, the exam is extremely difficult. Long time preparation is useless.

it is too hard to understand his lecture, especially when he opens his terminal and types alien language. He basically talks nothing useful relates to homework/test.. We need to learn all programming skills by ourselves as he thinks we have already mastered programming, but it is an intro programming course! His final test is tough, can't prepare

He is patiently, but he also makes this course so boring. He always runs his code in terminal and uses kinds of instructions to test, however he explains each instructions very simply which makes me hard to follow his course. Something he said will in the final test do not appear. His final sample questions only cover 10% of the final test :)

what disappointment, the class was so dull and boring I found it hard to stay awake, the exam was a total nightmare. and overall this course is just poorly designed and it is not structured at all!

Do *NOT* take this course. his lectures were full of inanities. you learn everything by yourself. the courses is *NOT* well structured an poorly designed. Do *NOT* buy the arduino kits from him. buy it from amazon, it works well. the final is extremely hard. no pritice exams. the example exam has *NO* relationship with the final.

I wish I could give a 0 out of 5.

what a stupid course. No structure or syllabus. Unreasonable exam and terrible prof.

A couple things about this class: 1. Lectures are very lacking in content, material, and structure. 2. The mooc is not a useful learning tool as you are unable to skip ahead over the useless boring parts. 3. Paul is in general disrespectful of student and treats them like idiots while simultaneously requiring prior knowledge in an introductory clas

If you're honours compsci and see him as your prof just switch into regular it's not worth it. Assignments rarely have anything to do with what you learn in class and the final is nothing like the few sample questions he gives.

1. If you cannot finish morning exercise, that is not your fault. 2. You have to teach yourself. 3. MOOC is boring and useless, avoid it. 4. Weekly exercise is time consuming. 5. Do not buy Arduino kit from him, buy from Amazon. 6. Final exam is a nightmare, avarage is 61/100. 7. No organization of lectures. Avoid him, but this course is good.

Just. Terrible. 6 hours a week of pointless rambling. I learned more on my own time then from Dr Lu Also the MOOC is useless. Way to ruin a great class.

I think he tried, but at some points, he was very unprofessional. He sent out very passive-aggressive mass emails. Also, We had a project where his input was that we had a "solid presentation" and yet he gave us a 12/30. Avoid this prof although everyone who took him in Fall 2018 semester didn't really have an option.

I had high hopes for this class. Coming into it this prof had a 4.5+ rating on here. But yeah, very disorganized, the MOOC is not helpful, greatly overcharged for Arduino kits, one of the most BS finals I've ever written. Everything everyone here's already said. Avoid for 274.

This class was torture, especially with this prof. I'm glad it's over but what a terrible experience

just avoid him

I respect him a lot but sadly, I would really like to say that he is one of the worst professors, in terms of teaching style, that I have met. His course has no proper structure and you have to do everything on your own. The weekly exercises are really time taking, don't worry if you can't solve the morning problems. Just AVOID HIM at all costs.

He is an amazing guy but when it comes to his lectures, he is really really bad and he goes off topic a lot.

Typically not on schedule; he uploads prelectures late at night (the day before class) and releases assignments a day later than announced. Assessments sometimes include answering opinion-based questions in paragraph/essay form (which isn't ideal for a class on tangible computing). Lectures are slow and dry and make you sleepy even on 2x speed. :/

Lectures are very dry and slow. Teaching is just ok. He is trying to teach people who have never programmed before everything there is to know about Huffman trees and OOP and ML. the learning curve is a vertical line. the weekly assignments are heavy and long, the morning problems are impossible within 30 mins. Dont suffer like me, skip this class.

Paul Lu is a god awful professor in every way. Boring videos that need to be watched before lecture, because hes to lazy to lecture in class. Weekly assignments that will take an entire day to complete. Morning problems that are impossible to complete in 30 minutes. This guy has no empathy for students and will force you to do bad in other classes

Lu makes this class hard for no obvious reason. To paint a picture: our final is 20 mins for 20 MC questions, that require heavy code reading/sight debugging, and 30 minutes for 4 short answer questions (multiple parts each if it's like the midterm). Plus, he refuses to give us practice material. Hard for no reason, and boring too. Avoid him.

Never take him worst prof ever

NIce guy, horrible teachings. And the testing with covid is almost impossible. 20 MC in 20 mins. Has long pre lecture videos then goes on mute for an hour during the lecture. Had to learn most on my own.

The course was very challenging, and prof. Paul Lu made it even more tough. Very rarely replies to emails, midterm and final was very time limited and reasonably unfair. Had to do a lot of self learning and some lectures were long and not useful. Assignments were very hard, and it was impossible to do some morning problems in 30 minutes.

with everything being online and no REDUCTION IN FEES, profs should be HELPING YOU OUT a bit. Mr. Paul was the complete opposite of that. Thresholds were so BAD.

Honestly the worst professor I have had so far. Passive-aggressive and very harsh with respect to marking. Worst final I have ever written from a pure test formatting perspective. STAY AWAY!

He is the absolute worst prof I have ever taken. Also his grade cutoff are unbelievable. For a class average at 71% cut-off for A is 89%. Never take him as your prof.

If I could give a negative grade to this prof, I would. Not only are his lectures atrocious, but he asks us to watch hours of prelectures before each. 2 coding quizzes every week, and huge weekly assignments. He doesn't teach us how to do either. To top it off, it has been more than a week into the next semester and he hasn't given our marks back.

Bruh, good luck

I think my junior high band teacher would teach this course better

Im a little disappointed I can't give him a zero cuz he truly doesn't deserve the one

Paul Lu, the worst prof ever had in the entire UofA, makes me unconfident in computer learning at that time. However, after taking Omid's CMPUT 275 in Winter, I can 100% confirm that if you feel bad about learning 274, it is not your fault, it is Paul Lu's. Just avoid him!

professor Lu is tough a cookie. I had a difficult time bro, didn't listen to my concerns and made the course even tougher big boss.

He turned what was supposed to be an introductory Python course into a machine learning course D:<

Professor Lu is a genuinely nice person but he makes this course way too difficult for no reason. The course is not designed to be for first-years anyway, and having Professor Lu does not help. He skipped way too many concepts in lectures and leapfrogged to advanced topics without explaining basics clearly. Just take 174 if you can.

just awful, worst prof I've had in uni. skips a lot of basixconcepts, exams way too long, I mean 9 short ans in 30 mins was way too many

His tests are abysmal. In the short answer portion of my final exam we had nine questions and were given 30 minutes to answer them all. The first seven were worth 4 points and the last two were worth 10 points and 12 points. Who does that? Paul is a very nice guy but is not the greatest prof in my opinion.

Worst exams ever. No practice material and not nearly enough time to complete the final (9 written response in 30min and 16 multiple choice in 30 min). On top of that the professor marks like an English teacher with OCD and having the handful of 'technical terms' he's looking for is worth most of the mark. Assignments were nice though.

One of the worst profs I've ever had. Doesn't know how to teach. He gives students the option to EA 2 marks on the final then gives an extremely difficult final. Short answer portion of the final kills. Do good on the assignments and morning problems and weekly exercises cause you can't depend on the final.

Awful professor . Classes were useless and also the exams are nowhere near what is taught in the class .Not much practice material either . In exams you dont have to give the right answers you have to give the answer which Paul likes . One of the worst professor in the university .

two 90 minute lecture videos a week outside of class, very unreceptive to feedback, and expects students to answer questions at his level of expertise. Teaches us stuff outside of class material and we are expected to know it on the exam. Very little material given for exam prep (one sample final for all midterm/final practice)

9 short answer questions in 30 minutes, and has the audacity to tell us that there were 4 questions with horrible justification to this. Worksheets barely helped in the final exam(imagine the last 3 or 4 classes teaching something which was barely covered on a final).

The worst teacher i have had in my life. He sets unrealistic expectation for an intro comp sci course. Lectures and videos are atrocious he basically sits there and rants endlessly with no clear structure for 3 hours. Final was brutal and unfair. No practice material and the very little you get is not at all related to the exam. AVOID HIM

Tough final exam, barely had enough time to read the problems, let alone think them through and provide the thorough answers he requires. He's a nice guy, but his lectures are disorganized, and the material taught and the sample short answer questions done in class were not representative of what was tested.

Crushes your soul. Half the mark depends on speedrunning through exams, typing speed and the insane level of detail required by the the markers. Short answers have no "right" answers, no feedback on how to learn to answer "correctly". Assignments were rare but tedious, arbitrary and without explanation. Most lectures are 1/2 rambling or silence :(

learned absolutely *nothing* from him

This is coming from a transfer student from another university, so my rating is compared to my prev programming prof. Introducing new topics was never good at all, this is an introductory course, so everyone is a beginner in this field. Almost all students I knew learned almost everything from youtube, I wish there was another prof for this course

I would never take his class again, he is very awful. Like a mechine to grade your weekly excercise. Always let TAs to grade your homework. Testcases are the standard for judging your homework, no matter how hard you try to write code, as long as you fail the testcase, you will get 0 points. Cheers..

Course content not that bad, but he insists he is teaching computer science and not programming and thus his lectures are a complete waste of time cuz he just talks about vague topics. Be careful on major assignments to review class discussion as he basically tells you how to do it. Assignment marking is fair, test marking harsh especially for SA

Class is an introduction to computing science but uses complex machine learning for assignments that can be very difficult to beginner programmers. The lectures are also very boring as he does not teach in class. Makes you watch recorded lectures prehand and the workload is heavy for an intro honours class!

This prof. will single-handedly ruin your software engineering / honors comp sci. experience. The lectures are completely useless and the tests are based on his own convoluted, yet outdated logic. Man uses vim to code and forces students to study PythonTutor in the age of VSCode debuggers. If you have this prof, may God have mercy on your soul.

If you are a comp-sci student, just take 174 instead. If you are in CompE or SoftE, my condolences. Every week, there are 2 three hour lectures, and each lecture also has a 1-hour long pre-lecture. He doesn't know how to teach, he just rambles. He does not value the time of his students.

I hate this guy. I am new to coding and I thought I would get better by taking CMPUT 274 but instead, I learned through my friends who carried me through this hell course.

if you are in CS just take 174, if you are in CE/SWE, get ready to die. painful experience, would never take again

I could find a homeless person, pay them to learn Python for an hour, ask them to teach CMPUT 274, and they'd still be leaps and bounds above Paul Lu. For a man who gives zeros on assignments for the slightest mistakes (your code can be perfect and he'll still throw you one), I'm sure the AIs he's worked on have more heart than him. Tip: RUN

Hated him. Never take his class. He never taught anything and would expect to know everything of what he mentions. If you have an option for another professor go with that else take 174.

Don't be like me, a fool with a survivorship complex. Take 174 instead. Paul is a well-intentioned guy but the tests are brutal. You can get full marks on all the homework you do by yourself and still not understand the material well enough to do well on the exams. Tests are an L, and you are basically given no practice material beforehand.

Paul Lu is the embodiment of delusion and ignorance mixed together. On top of 6 hours of in class time, which are a complete waste of time to attend, he releases 2-3 hours of lecture videos a week on obscure topics not designed for an introductory coding course. If you get even the slightest chance to get another prof, definitely take it....Run.

Even though some of the material was interesting, his teaching style was boring and uninteresting. The test focused on how Paul Lu writes questions and which questions are best even if multiple answers are correct. All of the tests were multiple choice, which appears to be a good thing, but the questions were unusually specific.

He posts useful preclass video, but his in class lectures are just him rambling for a very long time. And the tests are all multiple choice questions that leave a lot of room for opinions. Tests are very hard. Also he refuses to help anyone with any windows related problem even though most of the class uses Windows.

The three tags I put are exact antonyms to what he actually is. Very lecture heavy and no balance or engagement of material, just felt like i wanted to pass not actually learn the material.

Heavy tests

Terrible Prof and rambles a lot, course is not engaging. The midterm and final felt unfair while he offers little to no practice for these tests which accounts for most of your grade.

By far the worst professor in the CS department

If this guy is married, maybe I'm not completely hopeless.

Unnecessarily complicated course. Exams, while being multiple choice, require you to give answers that are "what do you think is the best?" Even when multiple answers are true. Avoid if possible.

No attendance and lectures are not worth attending

No gOod, he doesn;t know what he was talking about at all!