There are parts of this unit that I like, but it's made much harder than it has to be. I think Chris gets a lot of slack because he's a good speaker and quite likeable, but most of the lectures are just him waffling about something other than the actual content. The assessments are interesting and aren't actually that complicated, but people lose marks because of the convoluted task sheets and the exam is full of gotcha type questions (e.g., remembering something brushed over in less than a minute during one lecture that was never mentioned again). Seriously, half of the lecture content was never assessed in any way in my semester - Chris will make three exam questions on the same topic just to throw you off. The fact that Chris's units consistently have lower grades than every other CS unit and about half the cohort fail every year probably tells you everything you need to know about the teaching quality. To do well you just have to rote learn everything, relying on conceptual understanding will kill your grade.

Only reason it is 4 stars is because this is a hard unit. Chris is by far the best unit coordinator ive had so far in my CS degree. By far. Doesn't simply read off lecture slides. His explantions provided additional understanding, and the lecture slides themselves are also very helpful. This course sets the example for what a CS unit should be. The lectut was very helpful. Chris shows us implementations of the what we have done during the week and also makes it interactive of the students. You have to keep up with the labs and the lectures to do well in this subject. Start the projects early and actually do the unit work and you will be okay.

I might be biased, but this unit brought us some fun, actually interesting projects, and more importantly, gives you the chance to learn things on your own without having your hand held. Also Chris is a damn legend.

I'm a first year student whose only coding experience was CITS1401 last semester and yeah, this unit is fucking hard. But maybe not as bad as most people make it out to be if you keep up with all the lectures and labs. The lectures were quite hard to follow if you are new to coding like I was, extra learning on the side on wiki or youtube can definitely help with understanding some of the concepts like threading or coding. 4 out of 5 questions on the exam this semester were non-coding questions so definitely make sure you understand them. The coding can also be quite challenging if you don't have much experience with Java or C, but it's definitely doable if you keep up with all the lab questions (well, it was for me at least). The lab questions also had some extra challenge questions that I think are worthwhile (and really fun) to work through. The unit coordinators were really active on the help forum, and the projects are also organised with good explanations and updated with further clarifications. The first project we did was to emulate a simple stack machine running an imaginary language and god that was so fun (and painful) to code. It did make the lecture content regarding registers and cache a lot clearer to understand so it was a great learning experience. I've only done CITS1401 last sem and CITS1001 this sem alongside this unit so I don't know how it compares to most other computer science units, but so far, this is the best, most organised unit that I feel I've learnt the most from about programming and computers. You even get web pages specifically made to test sample solutions for the projects which I mean, wow. I don't know if they do this for other units but certainly not the ones I've done. ...but probably don't do this as a first-year though, unless you enjoy the pain that comes with a steep learning curve.

One of the harder subjects. Have to truly stay on top of things and the lecturer can sometimes go off-track but he is easily available and does provide help when necessary. Use the office hours as much as you can.

It fucking ruins your GPA and passion for computer science. The lecture literally talks nothing that'll help your project.