Reviews of professor David Zaretsky

Rating: 5.0/5, difficulty: 3.0/5
Dr. Zaretsky is a fantastic professor, I haven't completed the Intro to Compilers course but so far I have been impressed with his lectures and instructions for assignments. He is straight forward with what he expects and teaches you exactly what needs to be done on your own compiler. I wish more professors in CDM followed his course layout.

Rating: 5.0/5, difficulty: 3.0/5
He's very quick to respond and typically accessible. He covers lots of material so make sure you pay attention, participate in class, and ask questions. There are no exams or quizes, so this class is focused entirely on coding and your program assignments.

Rating: 4.0/5, difficulty: 4.0/5
Prof Zaretsky knows his stuff. I respect who he is and what he's done. As a lecturer, a bit of a mixed bag. Some classes, he can be engaging and make dry content interesting. Others, he's just reading slides. Lot of reading from very dry text. Homework is fair, but sometimes overly convoluted. Nice guy, who's responsive/accessible. Above average

Rating: 3.0/5, difficulty: 5.0/5
The professor is hard and helps you on the basic portions of coding. His teachings are unrelated to the assignments. The good part was though after lectures he gave us hints for homework. This class had 6 program assignments. No midterm, final and quiz. He allows late work with a 10% penalty. He also curves by a little so if you try you can pass.

Rating: 2.0/5, difficulty: 4.0/5
Great guy, and usually helpful if you can find time to ask questions in his busy schedule. The lectures just don't prepare you for the complexities of assignments and the write ups he supplies are super vague. Tons of people struggle on his homework and he assumes each HW is intuitive or that you have all the time in world to do them. Hit or miss

Rating: 5.0/5, difficulty: 4.0/5
He's a great lecturer with a deep understanding in the field. I felt like many students just started the homework like 2 days before and not finishing it, screwing up the homework. If you only know how to code in python and not having much of an idea of computer architecture, do start early or you will end up with a bad grade for sure.