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# My UNSW Computer Science Review

I have been studying Maths and Computer Science at UNSW since 2021, and I want to share my experiences with new upcoming students so they know what they're getting into and have potentially an idea of what electives they may want to take. Note that these reviews will be biased, opinionated and subjective based on my experience with them when I took them. Courses are different for everyone; I am a more practical programmer, and so I enjoyed more practical courses rather than theory. If I mention the structure or staff having a poor experience, they may have improved by the time you will be taking the course.

## Core Courses

### COMP1511 – Programming Fundamentals

- Term Taken: 21T1
- Lecturer in Term Taken: Marc Chee
- Other Lecturers: Sasha Vassar, Jake Renzella
- Prerequisite: None
- Difficulty: 🟢 Easy

COMP1511 is the introductory course for computer science at UNSW. No prior coding knowledge is required but certainly helps to hit the ground running. It is taught using C as the coding language and focuses on fundamentals, arrays, looping, pointers, structs, functions, linked lists, and a small amount of memory allocation.

- Each week consists of two 2-hour lectures and a TLB (tutorial lab) which is a 1-hour tutorial followed by a 2-hour lab.
- The tutorial will go over content taught in the previous week of lectures, and the lab gives you time to work on the weekly lab exercises. The lab exercises are usually pretty straightforward, though some challenge ones are designed to throw off even the strongest coders.
- Most weeks will also have a weekly test, which consists of three easier exercises focusing on reaffiring content from a couple of weeks beforehand. (_**Edit 24T2:** Seems like the weekly tests are no longer a thing_)
- The two or three assignments allow you to express your understanding of the content in a more involved (and I found, fun) way.
- Lastly, the final exam (which is now in person) features some theory and practical questions similar to the weekly tests, but the programming questions often scale in difficulty further into the exam. (_**Edit 24T2:** These days, the final exam is always in person, and it features some debugging questions followed by the practical questions_)

### COMP1521 – Computer Systems Fundamentals

- Term Taken: 21T2
- Lecturer in Term Taken: Sri Parameswaran
- Other Lecturers: Andrew Taylor
- Prerequisite: COMP1511
- Difficulty: 🟡 Easy - Medium

COMP1521 is one of the next steps after COMP1511 and is more of an introduction to low-level programming. You start by learning MIPS (an assembly language) which is quite different from any other language you will experience. After that, you move to system-level programming in C, including bitwise operations and file writing. The difference in difficulty purely depends on how quickly you take to this different style of programming.

The weekly schedule for COMP1521 follows the same lecture + TLB + Weekly Labs and Weekly Quiz as COMP1511. The only real difference is the final exam only has programming questions in it. I would strongly recommend taking this in a term with Andrew Taylor, as I think his lecturing style is a much better experience than Sri's. With this, the assignments usually become 'easy to pass / credit, medium to Distinction, hard to HD' and the exam becomes a little harder. It is also worth potentially considering taking this course later, as the following two courses also only need COMP1511, but open up a lot more avenues for electives, but I would also recommend taking this earlier than the other two if you aren't as confident with your programming skills just yet.

### COMP1531 – Software Engineering Fundamentals

- Term Taken: 21T3
- Lecturer in Term Taken: Hayden Smith
- Other Lecturers: Jake Renzella, Yuchao Jiang
- Prerequisite: COMP1511
- Difficulty: 🟡 Easy - Medium - Hard

COMP1531 is one of the next steps after COMP1511 and is an introduction to group projects and the software development life cycle. Becoming acclimated to group work is incredibly important for work after uni, so be prepared to put in a decent bit more time here than in COMP1511. When I took it, the coding language was Python, but it has since moved to JavaScript. Hayden is a fantastic lecturer though, so you will be in safe hands.

The weekly schedule for COMP1531 follows the same lecture + TLB + Weekly Labs as COMP1511, minus the weekly tests. The exam is much the same, but without that scaling difficulty for the most part. However, in place of the two assignments, there is a group project for 4-5 students across the whole term. As of 22T2, you are only allowed to preference one person from your TLB class, so there is going to be variance in who your random teammates are. If they happen to be like-minded in their goals? Cool! The term will be a bit easier. But if they don't contribute as much as they should, the project can easily become a huge time sink for you. Keep that in mind with choosing your tutorial time. (A proven strategy has been to occupy over half of the tutorial with friends so you're more likely to get people you can work with.)

### COMP2521 – Data Structures and Algorithms

- Term Taken: 21T3
- Lecturer in Term Taken: Ashesh Mahidadia
- Other Lecturers: Others
- Prerequisite: COMP1511
- Difficulty: 🟡 Medium

COMP2521 is one of the next steps after COMP1511 and is probably the most logical follow-up to the introductory course. It is taught using C, and content follows from linked lists at the end of COMP1511 with Abstract Data Types, Recursion, Trees, Graphs, Sorting and various other ADTs. Ashesh is a fine enough lecturer, but I spent most of the term watching Hayden Smith's recordings from 21T2. That being said, these recordings are now over two years old, and I generally recommend watching either your term's lectures or potentially Kevin Luxa's from 24T1.

The weekly schedule for COMP2521 loosely follows the same lecture + TLB + Weekly Labs and Weekly Quiz as COMP1511, with changes to the assessables. The weekly labs are now longer, and mostly just one or two larger exercises. These require more thinking than the average Level 1 COMP course lab exercise. The weekly quizzes are now theory-based MCQs as opposed to the practical exercises in COMP1511. The exam is much the same, but without that scaling difficulty for the most part. Assignments are often more tedious and time-consuming though. You can't just read the spec and start coding; taking the time to plan out your program and tackle it step by step can help alleviate the difficulty the course brings. Despite the difficulty increase, I do recommend taking this course  either immediately after COMP1511 if you are a comfortable coder, or a term later if you want to build your confidence a bit, since it opens up so many elective options that it's hard to ignore.

### COMP2511 – Object-Oriented Design & Programming

- Term Taken: 22T3
- Lecturer in Term Taken: Ashesh Mahidadia
- Other Lecturers: None
- Prerequisite: COMP1531 and COMP2521
- Difficulty: 🟠 Medium - Hard

COMP2511 is the next jump in difficulty after completing the first-year core courses. It is an introduction to object-oriented programming, using Java as its language of choice. The main topics are good design behaviours and some of the various design patterns the object-oriented paradigm follows. Once again, Ashesh is a fine enough lecturer, but there isn't anyone else that I know who lectures the course.

The weekly schedule for COMP2511 loosely follows the same lecture + TLB + Weekly Labs as first-year COMP courses, with changes to the assessables. The weekly labs are now much longer, and mostly just one or two larger exercises. I often found myself spending 2 or more hours on these labs, which was very different from my first-year experience. There are no weekly quizzes, and the exam is much the same, but without that scaling difficulty for the most part. Assignments are even more tedious and time-consuming than ever, as the assignment specs are often not very detailed, requiring many assumptions to be made (using the help of the forum). While interesting, all 3 of the assignments were a large time sink, especially the second one which was a paired assignment. I would recommend taking this around term 2 or 3 of your second year because it is such a large difficulty increase compared to the first-year courses, so taking some time to get your head wrapped around some electives may be a good idea to do first.

### COMP3121/3821 – (Extended) Algorithms and Programming Techniques

- Term Taken: 22T1
- Lecturer in Term Taken: Abdallah Saffidine
- Other Lecturers: Raveen de Silva, Aleksandar Ignjatovic
- Prerequisite: COMP2521 (65+ for COMP3821) and MATH1081
- Difficulty: 🟠 Medium - Hard (🔴 Very Hard for COMP3821)

COMP3121 and COMP3821 are very different courses from anything students would have done up to this point. These courses are all about algorithmic thinking and problem-solving, with no coding involved at all. The topics covered include divide-and-conquer, greedy algorithms, max-flow problems, dynamic programming, and reductions. However, the course content is extremely important and helps with any interview prep you may be undertaking.

~~The weekly schedule for these courses is very different from the first-year structure. For COMP3121, there are still two 2-hour lectures each week, but there is only one 1-hour tutorial and no recurring weekly work. Instead, there are four individual assignments on the different topics, which are very time-consuming and often quite tricky.~~

As you have probably noticed, COMP3821 is the extended version of COMP3121 and the one I took. The differences between the two are:

- ~~COMP3821 teaches the content faster with pre-recorded lectures, and the main lectures are treated as consultations.~~
- ~~The assignments in COMP3821 are harder, but worth less (10% each instead of 15% in COMP3121).~~
- ~~There are additional group assignments in COMP3821 in the off-weeks between the individual assignments (worth 5% each, all they are is creating your own assignment questions, pretty fun tbh).~~
- ~~There is a 10% participation component to COMP3821.~~
- ~~**Edit 23T1:** From what my friends have told me, COMP3121 now only has three assignemnts with three questions each, so there is now a larger gap in the workload between the two courses.~~

**Edit 24T2:** Both COMP3121 and COMP3821 have undergone significant changes to the assessment structure and content delivery:

- Both courses now feature the two 2-hour lectures, and have a new portfolio for the term rather than the old assignments.
- In 24T1, both courses had tutorials to delve into interesting problems related to the course content, though in 24T2, for COMP3121, it was one mega-tut that went for two hours.
- There is also a 2-hour lab each week where you go in to discuss certain problems from the portfolio or ask for pointers about them. The tutors at these labs will also be regularly giving you feedback for portfolio tasks on the online platform Formatif.
- The portfolio itself has a large number of problems divided up by grade level and module. There are as many as 70 written tasks plus moodle quizzes in COMP3121, and there will be a lot less in COMP3821 but the difficulty is also much higher. You can adjust your target grade as you like throughout the term, and can complete as many or as few of the problems as you feel comfortable doing.
- There is also a term-long research project for COMP3821, further setting it apart from COMP3121.
- There is still a final exam for both courses.

Considering doing one of these two offerings is core for CS and an elective for SENG, I would only recommend taking extended if you are confident, and enjoy, algorithms (a good sign is if you find COMP2521 fun), and if you can convince three other people to take it with you.

### COMP3900 – Computer Science Project

- Term Taken: 24T2
- Lecturer in Term Taken: Basem Suleiman, Imran Razzak, Hao Xue
- Other Lecturers: Unknown
- Prerequisite: COMP1531, COMP2521, and 102 UOC completed.
- Difficulty: 🟠 Medium - Hard

This course is considered the final capstone project you take as part of the university degree in computer science. You will engage in a term-long project as part of a 5-6 person group, and that pretty much summarises the whole course. Of course, with a group project of this magnitude, try to pick wisely who you will be spending the term with: try to pick people that have a range of interests (e.g. mix of front end and back end, perhaps speccing into security or AI in some way), as that will help make things go as smoothly as possible.

The weekly schedule for COMP3900 is one 2-hour lecture and one 2-hour lab. The lectures at the start of the term go through some of the course assignments, teamwork, Agile principles, UI design and the like, and transition into consultation hours during the second half of the course. During the labs, there will be regular check-ins with your tutor on the progress of the project, with occasional demos of said progress. Your group will be able to select from a range of options for projects in week 1, and will then spend the next 2 weeks clarifying requierements with the client for the project and writing a proposal. From there, you will engage in three sprints of work on the project, each capped of with a demo and retrospective. At the end of the last sprint, there will be a much larger final demo, project report, and code submission. The project is rather demanding and high-workload, so consider the options carefully, and make sure to put in consistent work throughout the term as to prevent a mad rush right at the end.

### COMP4920 – Professional Issues and Ethics in Information Technology

- Not taken yet

## COMP Electives I have taken

### COMP2041 – Software Construction: Techniques and Tools

- Term Taken: 22T2
- Lecturer in Term Taken: Andrew Taylor
- Other Lecturers: None
- Prerequisite: COMP1511
- Difficulty: 🟡 Medium
- Recommendation: Recommended

COMP2041 is a very interesting course that feels very much like a level 1 COMP course. The content focuses on Shell scripting for the first half, and then transitions into Python and various techniques using this language. I learnt a lot of skills that generally help with my approach to COMP assignments that aren't taught anywhere else. Andrew Taylor is a great lecturer, and I highly recommend taking this course.

The weekly schedule for COMP2041 follows the same lecture + TLB + Weekly Labs and Weekly Quiz as the level 1 COMP courses. The only real difference is the final exam only has programming questions in it. The assignments usually become 'easy to pass / credit, medium to Distinction, hard to HD' as is standard for Andrew Taylor courses. You could consider taking this in your first year, but it may be hard to fit around all the other level 1 core courses after COMP1511, and your MATH courses.

### COMP3231/3891 – (Extended) Operating Systems

- Term Taking: 24T1
- Lecturer in Term Taken: Kevin Elphinstone
- Other Lecturers: None
- Prerequisite: COMP1521 and COMP2521 (and 75+ WAM for COMP3891)
- Difficulty: 🟠 Medium - Hard
- Recommendation: Recommended

COMP3231 and COMP3891 are often highly recommended electives, and for pretty good reason, to learn more about how exactly computers work and the work that goes into things you don't tend to think about just using a laptop or PC. During the course, you will learn about Concurrency and Threads, System Calls, File Management and Virtual Memory. Kevin is a pretty good lecturer and definitely knows his stuff, so its definitely worth keeping up with these during the term. I would generally recommend this course as a good option to learn about how the systems we use everyday actually work, though only take the extended version if you truly have a passion beyond wanting to learn what an OS really is.

The weekly schedule for COMP3231 consists of two 2-hour lectures and a 1-hour tutorial. To differentiate it slightly, COMP3891 replaces the tutorial with an extra 1-hour lecture where Kevin gets to yap about various extended topics such as Scheduler Activations and Log-based file systems. There are three assignments to complete, and for the most part it'll be a case of you won't know what's happening until it finally clicks and it all falls into place. The final exam assesses all the theory content from the lectures and tutorials with no coding.

### COMP3311 – Database Systems

- Term Taken: 22T1
- Lecturer in Term Taken: Dong Wen
- Other Lecturers: John Shepherd
- Prerequisite: COMP2521
- Difficulty: 🟢 Easy
- Recommendation: Recommended

COMP3311 is a unique course that functions as an introduction to databases and the relationships surrounding them. It feels quite theory-heavy, but there is a focus on programming using SQL, and later Python, during the middle stages of the term. The course is certainly a bit of a breath of fresh air; the content isn't particularly fast-paced like most other uni courses, and the assessables are a lot easier too.

The weekly schedule for COMP3311 consists of two 2-hour lectures, one 90-minute tutorial, and some weeks have a short quiz consisting of four simple theory questions. The assignments are almost a joke, taking only a few hours to complete each. On the other hand, the exam is fairly tricky considering how easy the rest of the course is, but with enough preparation, this is also fine to handle.

**Edit 23T1:** From what my friends have told me, the course staff do seem to be making the assignments a little more involved than previously, so the difficulty is probably more of an 🟡 Easy-Medium nowadays.

### COMP4128 – Programming Challenges

- Term Taking: 23T3
- Lecturer in Term Taken: Raveen de Silva
- Other Lecturers: None
- Prerequisite: (75+ WAM and COMP3121) or COMP3821
- Difficulty: 🔴 Very Hard
- Recommendation: Not Recommended

COMP4128 is up there as one of the hardest course that the school of CSE has to offer. That being said, if you are up for the challenge, this will be one of the most enjoyable courses you can do! The content is esssentially Competitive Programming: the course. You learn about many techniques to solve interesting problems in speedy time complexities, some of which are taught in COMP3121/3821 but you now have to code up the algorithms.

The weekly schedule consists of two 2-hour lectures, and the TLB structure reminiscent of the core courses. There are 'weekly labs' in the Problem Sets that are released most weeks, but these usually don't have a deadline. Still, I recommend working on them consistently so you don't become too bogged down around other assessments and towards the final exam. There are three contests, which are a small time frame (usually 3 hours) to solve a set number of problems. These usually aren't worth a lot, but give you  taste at what competitive programming is like. The final exam is essentially one big long contest with more problems.

I don't recommend taking this course to the average student, but if you feel like you are a strong programmer, enjoy algorithms and are up for a challenging course, I encourage you to give it a go!

### COMP6080 – Web Front-End Programming

- Term Taken: 23T1
- Lecturer in Term Taken: Hayden Smith
- Other Lecturers: None
- Prerequisite: COMP1531 and COMP2521
- Difficulty: 🟠 Medium - Hard
- Recommendation: Recommended

COMP6080 has to be one of, if not, the most popular elective offered for CSE students at UNSW. The waitlist usually fills up within a couple days of registrations being opened, but it is for good reason. Hayden is, as always, a fantastic lecturer, and the lecture structure this time is a lot more self-driven with the prerecorded lectures. You will learn about HTML, CSS, Vanilla Javascript and ReactJS throughout the course, teaching you various front-end skills. If you want to learn skills in front-end programming but don't feel like learning it in your own time, this is a great course to work out if you'll enjoy that area of software development.

The weekly structure for COMP6080 consists of one 2-hour lecture and about 2-4 hours of prerecorded lectures, and one 60 minute tutorial. The assignments, particularly assignments 3 and 4 (which are paired) will be the main thing you spend the term doing, and take a large number of hours to do if you are aiming for HDs. The content itself isn't all that tricky, there's just so much that needs to be done for those assignments. The exam is a fast 3-hour burst where you write some simple games on a website using ReactJS, which I found quite fun.

### COMP6721 – (In-)Formal Methods: The Lost Art

- Term Taking: 23T2
- Lecturer in Term Taken: Carrol Morgan
- Other Lecturers: None
- Prerequisite: COMP2521 and MATH1081
- Difficulty: 🟡 Medium
- Recommendation: Recommended

COMP6721 is a unique course that doesn't teach you anything you don't already know, rather, it teaches you a different way of thinking about solving coding problems. A large focus is on invariants and using "What's True Here" comments to informally verify that the programs you write are correct. This new way of thinking is quite possibly very different to the usual sit-and-immediately-code process many uni students take, and I found it very interesting to learn and apply outside of the course.

The weekly structure for COMP6721 consisted of one 2-hour and one 1-hour lecture, with one 1-hour tutorial filling the last lecture hour. The tutorial encouraged group collaboration on a handful of sample problems to get you thinking in the ways the course encourages. Assessables included a small participation mark, a weekly quiz where you had two attempts, and a weekly assignment chunk. Each week, the assignment would build from the last, but rather than coding anything, you would answer a few questions in a quiz style format to a similar level of learning. There was no exam when I took the course.

### COMP6771 – Advanced C++ Programming

- Term Taking: 23T1
- Lecturer in Term Taken: Imran Razzak
- Other Lecturers: Hayden Smith
- Prerequisite: COMP2511
- Difficulty: 🟠 Hard
- Recommendation: Not Recommended

Having been using C for the last two years, I have been quite intrigued by its 'superior' C++, but have never gotten around to learning it in my own time. During this course, you will learn the basics and more of coding in C++, with focuses on the STL, classes, memory management, inheritance and templates. However, I do not recommend this course for a number of reasons, including the worst lecturer I have ever experienced.

The weekly structure for COMP6771 consists of two 2-hour lectures, one 2-hour workshop where you can work on the many weekly lab exercises. Initially, there were eight of these a week, which would mean spending up to 6 hours a week just on these exercises worth 1% of your final grade each week. This was reduced to four per week after flexi-week, but the sour taste was already left behind. The assignments were initially the best part of the course, and the first two of them were actually pretty fun to do. However, they are quite a bit of work, and problems with the third one made it not nearly as enjoyable for me. Also, any communication on the course forum was either abrupt or non-helpful, so overall do not recommend taking this course _unless_ you really need the uni structure to learn C++.

**Edit 24T1:** It seems like Hayden Smith may be taking this course in 24T2. If this is indeed the case (which seems quite likely at this point), this course jumps up to recommended, especially if you would like to learn modern C++ syntax and features.

### COMP6991 – Solving Modern Programming Problems with Rust

- Term Taking: 24T1
- Lecturer in Term Taken: Zac Kologlu
- Other Lecturers: None
- Prerequisite: COMP2521
- Difficulty: 🟡 Medium
- Recommendation: Recommended

COMP6991 is a unique course that aims to look at various problems different coding languages have to face, and compare some examples with how the Rust programming language addresses them. While this is their aim, I found it very much felt like a course that taught the language and that's it, though this was still enjoyable enough. Zac is a good lecturer, And the way the language goes about things is still really interesting, would recommend.

The weekly structure for COMP6991 consists of two 2-hour lectures and a 2-hour workshop. The workshop is kind of a hybrid between a tutorial and a lab, where you spend the time looking at exercises in groups, though these exercises are not worth any marks. There are some lab exercises to be completed each week, but these don't usually take that long. Finally, there are the two large assignments and the final exam. Nothing about these was super difficult, but a lot of time needs to be spent thinking about the design, and there will still be a large number of lines written.

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