Reviews of professor Nadia Polikarpova

Rating: 1.0/5, difficulty: 5.0/5
another chance I'll never take her class ever again. If you really want to learn something useful don't take this class. Be prepared to teach yourself Haskellband spend at least 10 hours per week. The class has nothing to do with databases, lectures are messy and nonorganized. The Final is super duper hard, my heart was broken at the first sight.

Rating: 1.0/5, difficulty: 5.0/5
The course feels more like "Haskell crash course" than an actual PL course. We did not learn any design considerations for PL, or ideas on how to build new features. It was basically an intro-to-CS course, but done in Haskell with minimal guidance on how to actually do Haskell. Spent more time on Hoogle (Haskell docs) than I did on lectures.

Rating: 5.0/5, difficulty: 3.0/5
This review is for the Fall 2022 course. The first few assignments were somewhat hard, but late days were given without penalty so overall it was fine. The professor knows the subject very well and is good at answering any questions. I did not know much Haskell before, it was nice to be able to build a small project in it by the end of the course.

Rating: 1.0/5, difficulty: 1.0/5
Is this a class on programming languages theory? Because it actually just felt like a long, dry tutorial on Haskell punctuated by tests and homework that felt much more appropriate for a data structures and algorithms course rather than a PL theory course. Very heavy workload. Hard final exam. Very frustrating course overall.

Rating: 1.0/5, difficulty: 5.0/5
The lectures do not prepare you for the homework at all. There is such a huge disconnect between what she expects from the students given what she has gone over in class. Every homework was an absolute nightmare and a classic case of figure it out all on your own. The final was designed for what she said to be a 3 hour period, but took 10 +.

Rating: 3.0/5, difficulty: 4.0/5
Lectures were way too fast and confusing. Every lecture left me feeling more and more lost and confused.

Rating: 3.0/5, difficulty: 5.0/5
She is smart and friendly, but what I don't like is that she makes the class very very hard, too hard. The homeworks are hard, and the tests are very hard. This class is a beast. I think it's too complex for the time we have. It's probably the hardest class I've taken at UCSD. I'm an A and B student but I don't know if I can pass this one.

Rating: 3.0/5, difficulty: 5.0/5
Young prof who knows her stuff. Passionate about material, but tends to talk way too fast due to over-excitement. Languages used are Lambda Calc, Haskell, and Prolog. 7 hws, which is a little excessive for a CSE upper-div. HWs ranged in difficulty w/2 hard assignments. Exams are TOUGH; they are just as hard as HWs i.e. coding based exams.

Rating: 4.0/5, difficulty: 4.0/5
While the homeworks are difficult, they ensure that you learn a good amount in the class. Overall the material is very dense but she does a good job trying to explain all of it in a way that makes sense. Overall would recommend her if you need to take the class but wouldn't rave about her. Good but not amazing.