Really good course, if you are into building stuff and solving practical problems this is definitely a course you need to take.
Great course for engineers. Really makes you think, experiment and troubleshoot. Peshkin is super enthusiastic and wants everyone to do well. Homeworks get progressively more challenging, and some people aren’t able to complete assignments by the end. Midterms and final are quick and painless if you were able to complete all of the assignments. Taking this class made me a better coder and problem solver.
The class is interesting and fun but takes up quite some time.
This class in incredible. It provides a lot of hands on experience and you become very proficient at building/programming circuits. Overall a very fun class, but you get out as much as you put in. This class did become incredibly difficult and time consuming somewhere around week 7. but it gets better. You end up building and coding a new circuit for almost every class, which keeps it very interest, but is also time consuming. This being said, I would definitely recommend this class. Also it counts as a technical elective for some majors (check), which is pretty cool
I will say I learned a lot about programming in this class. However, if you have never done programming, be wary of taking this class. It is not very introductory like I had thought. The problem is that after we finished the unit on circuits, we moved onto coding, which I had very little experience in. We were given very difficult codes to complete in very little time. There is no textbook and nothing to reference from class to help with these codes - you either got it or you didn't. This led to class being VERY stressful at times. Also, a lot of the other students in the class were experienced, so we never slowed down to explain much since most of the others got the codes.
The course started off pretty easy and we were introduced to different electrical components slowly. The last few assignments when we transitioned to Arduino were a dramatic increase in difficulty for me. As much as I appreciate what Prof. Peshkin says about the learning process being the actual building and troubleshooting of our projects, I think the time I spent working on some projects was really not worth it (fixing bugs in my program that took me hours to realize). Also, class time is not spent effectively. A great proportion of class time is spent assessing and talking about the previous assignments. By around midway through the quarter we stopped learning new things and class time was mostly just discussion about programs. I would rather be exposed to more electrical components, learn more maker skills (soldering etc.) during class time, and have a discussion section just meant for talking about assignments. It would also have been better if Prof. Peshkin showed us some of the more complicated projects he has done, and walked us through his process of design and implementation.
This class is great for those with a lighter schedule or who are able to spend a huge amount of effort coding in the final weeks. Classes may feel somewhat unhelpful in completing assignments so read ahead and ask lots of questions all the time. Follow these steps and have a fantastic time learning the basics of building electronics.
While I do think that I learned a lot from this course, I had the impression that no previous knowledge was necessary going into it, which I do not think is the case. Professor Peshkin seemed to treat the class as if everyone was comfortable with the material, and as someone who has basically no background in programming and none in electronics, I really struggled to keep up.
This course was extremely helpful. I learned so much in this class that will help me become a better engineer. Professor Peshkin is an incredible professor-I highly suggest you take this class.
This is a class that will teach you more than just programming. Professor Peshkin is a fantastic professor that encourages his students to develop a rational and engineer-like method towards solving problems. GREAT CLASS to take as a freshman engineer, the homework assignments are challenging but force the students to learn independently.