Uwaterloo CS courses

[Justinliu]

I need some help picking remaining courses that I need to grad, was wondering if you guys can help me as I am really having trouble picking out courses that I can manage

The coming spring term I will be taking cs350, two electives ( to finish all the elective and non-math requirements)

but I still need cs341, and 4 more cs courses (I have only taken cs 348, cs 360)

I want to take the A.I. course and the security, but I want to know the difficulty of those. All I know it's that I should not take any of the two followings together in the same term: cs 341, cs 350, real-time.

So anyways my main problem is the 4 other cs courses I need, and how I should schedule them with cs341 in 2-3 terms.

Thanks in advance, hope someone can give me some advise here.

[Tony]

Assuming BCS, at least 3 of those 4 CS courses need to be of 4xx level. Meaning that you'd probably need both CS350 and CS341 first (certainly for anything interesting). They are doable in the same term.

CS343 (Concurrency) is one of the few optional 3xx CS courses that you could take (if you want to avoid 4xxs as much as you can).

CS456 (Networks) has been one of the most interesting (fairly novel) courses that I've taken, and is reasonably lightweight on the amount of work required.

CS444 (Compilers) is awesome, but it falls into the 452/444/488 triad that separates UW CS students into two groups -- those that take at least one of those, and those who don't. If you have to ask about the difficulty of the courses, those are probably not for you.

If you can find a prof to act as your advisor, you can do CS499R in any area of your own interest. Although apparently this is not applicable unless you've started before the 2012 graduation class... weird.

[Justinliu]

Thanks for the fast reply~
oh yea BCS for me

Yea I read about cs343 but didn't really want to take that course. For the other 3xx course, I was considering: cs349 or cs370. I know what they are about but not sure about the difficulty, do you know anything about those courses?

and about A.I. i heard different opinion, one of my friend said it was so easy because the midterm was MC and the prof basically gave out most of the answer in class

for interest I kinda want to take the security course, hows the difficulty for that?

[Tony]

Justinliu @ Fri Jul 29, 2011 11:32 pm wrote:

for interest I kinda want to take the security course, hows the difficulty for that?

If it's interesting enough, does it matter?

Previously I figured that if one wanted an easy CS degree, they would be getting it from an institution other than UWaterloo.

But to answer your question re: Security -- it's not known as a difficult course, but as usual, it depends on term/prof/class/yourself. I know people who really enjoyed it. I also know people who really disliked it.

[Brightguy]

I found the A.I. class to be enjoyable, but my cheeky comment at the end of it was that while they've mastered the "artificial" part, they still need to work on the "intelligence" part. The methods were pretty varied and ad-hoc. Also some of the particular topics covered probably depend largely on the prof.

I can't comment on the other courses you've listed. To date I've taken the grad-level versions of 442, 466, 482, 486, and 487.

[Ultrahex]

I have no idea where this CS 341 + CS 350 combination saying it should not be done (this is not the first time I have heard this though).

I personally did CS 365, CS 341 and CS 350 in the same term (+ 2 other courses) and it was no major issue.

It is not the worse thing to do together, but it is not a very easy combination as 2nd year courses are; but it really is just preparing you for the more upper year courses where you are going to need to plan and coordinate to make good use of your time.

CS 343 (Concurrency) is relatively easy, however mostly just another bad specification course (like CS 246) and weekly/bi-weekly assignments.

CS 466 (Algorithms) is hard, mostly interesting (at least parts of the course); but can be very hard also.

CS 456 (Networks) is very easy (but I have bias), most people just stumble due to Java programming or all except last assignment, and not having good knowledge of multi-threading which somewhat simplifies all the assignments (which there is 4 of). The exams are the hardest part of the course and are just all very quirky without a good understanding of the material.

CS 488 (Graphics) is EXTREMELY time consuming, the material is not too hard, and a lot of material needs to be in your head in pretty good detail for the midterms and final which makes the course hard.

[Tony]

My guess would be that both 341 and 350 are substantially more demanding than 2nd year courses. For those students not paying much attention up to that point, they could end up in a bad spot with both of those courses at the same time... although, in my opinion, the two are doable together for anyone comfortable with their CS up to that point.

When I've done CS 456 we've had just 3 assignments, but the exams are kind of quirky. Still an easy course.

I've posted this one before, but CS444 is basically a single demanding project:

Both of my group members were taking CS488 at the same time though (yeah...). But you could sleep after you graduate