I know it's CSC 112, but I'm still curious if you guys recommend Nelson or Rodman. Rodman continually has great grade distributions, and Nelson has taught this class once with a less than stellar grade distribution; however, it was about 8 years ago. Has anyone had Nelson in any other classes? Any advice, recommendations?

8/16/2008 12:59:07 AM

isn't rodman the middle-aged dude that's losing his hair?

if it is, he's boring as shit

8/16/2008 8:45:40 AM

whichever one deducts less for missing class.

was 1% per absence last semester + whatever quiz you missed, but the lowest 3 quizzes were thrown out.

also rodman will take about Fortran in class less than 1% of the time. Don't plan on asking him any questions either.

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8/16/2008 8:45:47 AM

DO NOT TAKE RODMAN.

the dude is so full of himself, the classes are super early. Rodman doesn't teach at all...and I can only guess this nelson guy doesn't either. You learn what you need to know about fortran from the TAs (ask Wraith or pimpmaster69).

the only good thing about this class with rodman was laughing at him baa-ing like a sheep when we were talking about binary stuff.

8/16/2008 9:01:15 AM

Just curious cause Nelson only had about 14% A's compared to Rodman's 30% or so.

8/16/2008 11:58:37 AM

well if nelson taught 8 years ago, it was probably structured really differently then. there might not have even been labs for it. i promise you, get nelson, become friends with your TA or find a section with a cool one, learn fortran from them, PROFIT.

8/16/2008 12:04:05 PM

Sounds good, any one else have opinions?

8/16/2008 1:00:19 PM

Nelson is not a great professor in any class he teaches, ask anyone who had him for CSC 200. My honest opinion working with the man for the past 3.5 years go with Rodman. Either way you will learn little to nothing about Fortran in your lecture. Everything you will need to know will be taught in labs. If you have any problems with the programs I can help you. Wraith is know programing FORTRAN for NASA as well so hit him up I know he would be more than happy to help you as well.

8/16/2008 2:08:41 PM

^Great, Thanks! I just went through Nelsons CSC 200 grades and they are not desirable.

8/16/2008 8:52:23 PM

rodman's class blew hard. 8 am, boring, monotone, i literally never stayed awake a single full class in there, not even the first day. the worst thing is he knows he and his class suck and that no one is listening, but doesn't really care. he walks around and throws out the people sleeping, i sat next to a guy that would wake me up whenever he started making a round. he talks about computer theory and logic and never about fortran itself. you learn everything in lab and it's like 90% of your grade. you have plenty of time to do the labs and there are TA office hours where they'll help you out if you're stuck, so there's really not much reason to not get at least a B in the class.

rodman's class is very boring, but it's very easy to get a good grade. I got an A+.

8/17/2008 8:43:47 AM

How time consuming are labs, they look like they got tougher as his class took a turn for the worse in grade distributions?

[Edited on August 20, 2008 at 12:31 PM. Reason : ]

8/20/2008 12:21:41 PM

they are quite time consuming

8/20/2008 6:10:06 PM

DO YOUR OUTLABS IN THE LAB OR GO TO ANOTHER SECTION AND DO IT. IF YOU WORK WITH PEOPLE HAVE A FUNDAMENTALLY DIFFERENT WAY OF CODING IT. THEY DO CHECK IF YOU CHEAT.


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8/20/2008 7:53:49 PM

yup have fun with that class, I hated it and you will to.

9/2/2008 7:48:38 PM

^but did you get an A in it?

9/2/2008 8:52:33 PM

i got a B. because i forgot to sign my name on one of those things so my academic integrity was in question and a few attendance days were off but i didn't care enough to bitch.


just pay close attention to the grade sheets. a lot of times for the out labs the hardest part will only be worth 5 or 6 points. if you can get them to print out some of the easier values but the final thing isn't all in the right formatting 9 times out of 10 its not worth it to spend the extra 3 hours not getting any help from your TA and trying to program that shit trial and error. Especially when its only worth like 5 points on the grade sheet. Go to a different session if your TA doesn't help you. Turn in your gradesheet for that week and walk the fuck out. Don't cheat. This is one of those classes where they actually check that shit. They aren't bluffing.

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9/2/2008 10:22:54 PM

Hahaha man I loved teaching this class (I taught it for about 3 years when I was in school). If you are still picking TA's, try and get Jared McCormick or Charles Yu. I've worked with both of them in the past and they are both excellent TA's. If your TA sucks, they won't care if you come sit in on their lab and ask them questions either, we all know that some TAs have trouble with communicating. As mentioned before though, don't cheat. They didn't check as much in the past few years but the lab admin now uses software to check and see how similar your programs are. It is very easy to determine who copied off of who. If you need help, ask a TA, they seriously would be more than happy to help you.

9/3/2008 11:42:14 AM

hhahahaha no fucking way, I scraped with a C+

I didn't do the final project though cuz I couldn't figure it out.

Seriously though, just go to the TA's. They are ballin and will help you out.

[Edited on September 3, 2008 at 7:02 PM. Reason : cccc]

9/3/2008 7:02:22 PM

Isn't the final project just using recursion? It's weird to get a feel for it at first, but I wouldn't say it's all that hard.

9/3/2008 10:09:20 PM

If you don't wait until the last minute (1 week or less) to start it the final project isn't that bad. I got a 99 on the final because I didn't properly space out my code to make it readible.

I think I ended up with a B+ because I missed so many quizzes in lecture.

9/4/2008 12:07:29 PM

The TA's run this class...the profs are boring and crap...ask the TA's, they will help you

9/25/2008 1:29:31 PM

^Yeah it's pretty easy. A little time consuming, but I just knock the labs out on friday

9/25/2008 2:43:50 PM

haha i forgot wraith was my TA!


the lecture sucked ass, i rarely went, and slept the days i went. got an A methinks

9/25/2008 3:15:55 PM

Quote :

"Hahaha man I loved teaching this class (I taught it for about 3 years when I was in school). If you are still picking TA's, try and get Jared McCormick or Charles Yu. I've worked with both of them in the past and they are both excellent TA's. If your TA sucks, they won't care if you come sit in on their lab and ask them questions either, we all know that some TAs have trouble with communicating. As mentioned before though, don't cheat. They didn't check as much in the past few years but the lab admin now uses software to check and see how similar your programs are. It is very easy to determine who copied off of who. If you need help, ask a TA, they seriously would be more than happy to help you."

I have Joseph Park, cool guy. Can explain it well for the most part. I asked Charles Yu a question, he's really good from what I can tell.

9/25/2008 7:40:31 PM

^^Yeah if you were in my lab section you probably got an A. It was very rare for anyone to not get an A in my class.

9/30/2008 2:10:26 PM

What all should we study for Rodman's test?

9/30/2008 2:25:44 PM

rodman gives tests now? all i remember were these stupid fucking quizzes about sheep and shit.

9/30/2008 3:41:33 PM

8 labs worth 80% of your grade and two exams worth 20% each.

9/30/2008 4:08:05 PM

Wraith was an awesome TA. He helped me alot in that class!

9/30/2008 7:50:21 PM

So if they have a program that can tell if 2 programs are copied from one another, then out of 300+ people, wouldn't it show two copied programs just out of coincidence?

10/3/2008 3:37:41 PM

no, there are just too many ways to do the stuff

10/3/2008 6:12:41 PM

even with a code of 30 lines?

10/3/2008 9:35:04 PM

i have forgotten the name of the program but if you google it, it tells you how it works. Iirc it is an algorithm that checks/analyzes line numbers, spacing, variable names, and general structure of the program.

[Edited on October 5, 2008 at 1:15 PM. Reason : .]

10/5/2008 1:14:30 PM

^It's probably MOSS.

^^I've wondered the same thing, but I've never seen or heard of a false positive in any of my classes that use it so it must be pretty solid.

10/5/2008 2:24:19 PM

rodman used MOSS last semester.

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10/5/2008 3:14:55 PM

Yeah it's MOSS.

It doesn't just say "These two are the same", it gives a likelihood that they are the same and the parts of the programs that are similar. It is at the user's discretion to decide. Usually it is pretty obvious whether or not someone copied after MOSS points it out to you.

10/7/2008 11:24:16 AM

Ok makes sense, I was just thinking with a 30 line code program and 300 people, it might pick up false alerts.

10/7/2008 12:59:29 PM

i'm pretty sure they just look at MOSS and check to see if people (in the same lab section?) copied each other and just changed minor things. I'm sure out of 300 people the chances of 2 people doing the same thing is pretty high with a lot of the easier straight foward outlabs. Once you get to subroutines and stuff the number of ways that you can do the outlabs goes up pretty rapidly.

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10/7/2008 6:51:30 PM

anyone here who is really good at Fortran, able to help me out?

11/8/2008 9:54:55 AM

i'm not about to do that shit again

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11/8/2008 4:13:58 PM

Dont take it with either. But if you have to, take it with nelson. Joe Pack is the head TA and has been for a while. I know him personally and hes a great guy to learn from.

11/8/2008 8:49:21 PM

I'm almost done with this class.


Joe Pack can have his moments

11/8/2008 9:13:52 PM