Jose Calderon

This professor has taught: CMSC141, CMSC142, CMSC216, CMSC320, CMSC330, CMSC388V, CMSC430, CMSC433, HDCC106, HDCC208M, HDCC208V

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Jose Calderon CMSC430 Expecting an A+ juiceman 03/07/2024	Did you think the exams or other major assignments were fair? Yes, projects and exams were fair, based on what’s covered in lecture and course notes. --- Did you think the professor had reasonable expectations of the students in the course overall? Expectations were reasonable. Come to class or don’t, but make sure to read and keep up with the course notes. Jose did want us to engage deeply with the concepts… thinking of our examples and test cases. --- Were you a fan of the professor's teaching style? Loved Jose’s teaching style. You can tell he really cares. He did a mix of chalk board and live coding. I liked how he showed his coding process (test-driven development) and using documentation. --- Was the workload appropriate for the number of credits? Yup, 4 main coding projects + 1 final project. 2 smaller assignments. Semester projects took 6-8 hours. Final project took longer, 10-12 hours. Two midterms, take home, 24 hours, 4-8 hours, median for both midterms was 95. --- Was this course a waste of time or was it beneficial in some way? I think this course was beneficial. Even though I may not write another compiler in my career, I did learn to be more pedantic. I had to be really careful in planning my pseudocode before writing my code. I learned how to trace through and debug low level code (Assembly). I think the course is reminiscent of drawing memory diagrams with the stack and heap in CMSC131/132… except now we’re producing assembly code to do so for Racket code. I personally enjoyed working with stack and heap, but maybe it's not the most industry practical course. --- How much support were you given throughout the semester (office hours, extra resources, etc.)? Piazza responses were god tier… Pierce! Jose offered plenty of office hours by appointment; he was always willing to discuss ideas and even do code reviews. There was also a good amount of TA office hours; however, there were frequent cancellations without replacement. --- TLDR: If you liked the memory diagrams in 131/132, the lexer/parser project in 330, and especially the assembly project in 216, then you’ll thoroughly enjoy this course. It’s a manageable workload and gives more exposure to lower-level programming. You’ll learn the difference between compile vs run time ;)
Jose Calderon CMSC430 Expecting an A+ Anonymous 12/24/2023	Jose is the best lecturer I've ever had. It's sad that he's no longer teaching at UMD. Hopefully, he will come back in the future. The lectures were interesting, and the projects were straightforward. They were designed to help us actually understand the concepts. I didn't really understand heap/stack in 216, but 430 helped me truly get it.
Jose Calderon HDCC208V Expecting an A greenhoodie04 12/21/2023	not a CS major just lucked out ig, but I get the hype around him. he's very passionate about what he does and even takes the time to try to understand or rework student ideas. even though I didn't get like 1/3 of the things he talked about (bc again, I'm not a CS major), the way he would explain things would make me understand in context. easy-going guy and assignments weren't too hard. only bad thing about him is that he fr does not put in grades.
Jose Calderon CMSC430 Anonymous 12/17/2023	incredible for 430. very passionate about the course and wants his students to do well. Exams aren't bad and the projects are doable if you start them early. Cool course.
Jose Calderon CMSC430 Expecting an A Anonymous 12/12/2023	This is a great class. I had 330 with Roger Eastman and thought it was super boring. This class is about 100 times better. José is very clear and knows a lot about compilers. I recommend skimming the notes for the week on Sunday before attending class. The projects are pretty easy in my opinion. The exams this year were take home and similar to a project. The pace can be kind of slow. Unfortunately, I don't think he will teach this class again, but if he ever comes back, I recommend choosing José.
Jose Calderon CMSC430 Expecting an A- Justacoder 11/16/2023	One of the better Professors at UMD. His compiler class is well organized and well run. It is clear Jose is passionate and knowledgeable about compilers, his lectures some of the best, they are engaging and topics are well explained in detail. Projects can be tricky and they do build on each other, notes and lecture material should give you enough more of an understanding to get them done. Projects have public and secret test, getting the public test done will usually grantee a good grade, you'll probably miss a couple of test, it is honestly better to just take a high score rather than spending hours trying to get a hundred. Exams are take home coding assignments, they can take a bit of time but usually fine in terms of difficulty.
Jose Calderon CMSC430 Expecting a B Anonymous 06/23/2023	I had Jose for CMSC216 and CMSC330 and CMSC430. The first thing I want to bring up is that Jose is unlike any other professor/instructor at UMD (With the exception of Dave Mount). Not only does Jose know the ins and outs of everything he is teaching, but he has a passion for teaching what he knows. He'll make sure to give you an answer that is as fully correct as he can make it. He really wants his students to understand everything he is teaching and will go to great lengths to help them understand. His office hours are amazing and will really push the student to learn the concepts when they are struggling. He has helped clarify a lot of things for me especially in CMSC330 when the topics of NFA's and DFA's were killing me. He's also really funny and has a great sense of humor. It's important to note that CMSC430 IS A HARD CLASS. Seriously, it's really hard and a lot of people don't expect that because of Jose's amazing reviews (which he deserves). But it's important to understand that CMSC430 is essentially CMSC216 + CMSC330. In CMSC430, you will get thrown into the belly of the beast with about two weeks to learn the Racket programming language (which is a Functional programming language). So yeah if you suffered and hated Ocaml in CMSC330, you're going to learn even more functional programming that has the most ridiculous syntax imaginable (lookup what a racket program looks like) and the most useless error messages possible (Highly recommend using chatGPT to see what your error messages mean. Saved me a ton of googling). However, if you were a fan of functional programming and loved lambda calculus then this class won't be that bad. It will be tedious but it won't be horrific. It also matters how many other classes you are taking at the same time because this class has such a heavy work load. Projects: The projects are the bulk of the grade in this class. But these projects are so much different than lower level cs class projects. You can dedicate a ton of time in CMSC216 and CMSC330 to try and pass every test. In CMSC430, don't waste your time. If you get an 89% on a project, it's not worth the stress of 5 hours in the middle of the night and the destruction of your brain cells to bump it up to a 93% especially when the problems in the code might be so minor where you really understood the concept the project was trying to teach you but there was a small implementation error. Trust me, getting an 80% on a CMSC430 project a few times is okay. Writing the assembly is not that bad. Just review and comment what each line does in your example programs and you begin to understand it all pretty well. It can get pretty tedious when you're writing a program in a function programming language where the job of the program you're writing is to spit out assembly code in a specific order. Make sure to read the lecture notes Jose gives, don't just watch the videos. Also most importantly, don't cheat on the online exams. Jose will most likely catch you and you really don't want the stress of an XF or a 0 on an exam hanging over your shoulders. We didn't get our second exam back for 2 months because of cheating and some people didn't get told they were caught until after the end of the semester because they were doing a giant analysis to determine who was cheating. If you fail an exam, try again and study harder and go to him for help. I got a B on the first exam, totally bombed the second exam, and had about a B average for the projects. I got a really high grade on the final project and ended up with a B. It's a class worth taking because I think it's essential to know how a programming language is made considering the fact that cs majors constantly use programming languages. It's gonna be a lot of work though.
Jose Calderon CMSC430 Expecting a B Anonymous 05/31/2023	If you really like low level programming and have a good grasp on computer fundamentals, go for it. If you are looking for this class to provide you with an introduction to compilers and to understand the big picture not just the little details, do not take this course. He switches back and forth between examples and even after watching his videos and reading his notes and knowing exactly what he's doing, the way he explains examples is so so confusing. If he made videos for the later topics in the course this would not have been that big of an issue though. My biggest complaints were how unorganized the professor and staff were (Aside from the lecture notes that are from previous years), how horrific the communication was (dates would be changed, assignments would be posted and the only way to know was to constantly stress-search through the hundredddssss of discord posts) and grading was very unreasonable.
Jose Calderon CMSC433 Expecting an A+ Anonymous 05/31/2023	Jose did an excellent job teaching 433 this semester, especially considering he was understaffed and rewrote the curriculum from scratch. I would say that he is one of my favorite CS professors I have had so far.
Jose Calderon CMSC430 Expecting an A- Anonymous 05/29/2023	Jose has incredible passion for teaching and really cares about his students, and the lectures reflect that. Definitely take Jose if you have the chance for any class — you'll learn a ton and enjoy the course
Jose Calderon CMSC430 Expecting an A Anonymous 05/20/2023	Jose's approach to compilers is great for several reasons: - Fantastic lecture notes. There's basically a small textbook's worth of compilers material available any time to understand the class concepts. - Detailed videos. Excellent in tandem with the notes. - In person lectures are informative. Jose makes us work through conceptual problems in class so we can understand them before diving into code. Really valuable. - Take home exams. You are given more than enough time to take them and you can access the detailed notes. - Straightforward projects. The coding projects are small in scope (you get a week or so to do each one), but really help you reinforce important compiler concepts. They're super fun and not too difficult. You'll need skill with functional programming and writing assembly instructions; the knowledge from 216 and 330 will be handy here. Learned a lot and would definitely recommend.
Jose Calderon CMSC433 Expecting an A- Anonymous 05/19/2023	The course is great. The lectures and projects of the course are of high quality. All lectures are recorded, Jose also uploads all the class notes, including some questions for us to complete after lecture and will explain them next lecture, which helps learning. The only complaint is that there is no piazza, all Q&As are hosted on Discord, mixed with other course-related discussions, which makes it difficult to search. Might not be the professor's fault because the dept. didn't arrange enough TAs for this class with 200+ people.
Jose Calderon CMSC433 Expecting an A Anonymous 05/18/2023	Fantastic lecturer as usual. He does a live example lecture style where we write a program in class using the concepts he wants to teach us, which worked pretty well for me. Unfortunately the lack of staff (completely the fault of the college) made a lot of things difficult, like slow grading and few office hours.
Jose Calderon CMSC430 Expecting an A- Anonymous 05/15/2023	Before I begin this review, I would like to note that the cons I have listed are due to some TA staffing issues that happened in the CS department this semester. This isn't on Jose or the TAs. First of all, I loved this class. It was intriguing and Jose did an excellent job making it fascinating to learn about the compilers and interpreters, exploring how to incrementally add features, and connecting them to examples from his personal career writing compilers. Some of the key pros I would list are: 1) Interesting assignments and final project options (Could be challenging at times) 2) All lecture notes for the languages we covered were posted in advance before the course started (this was super helpful when preparing for midterms) 3) Asynchronous videos were provided of him walking through the languages from past semesters (He started recording our lectures halfway into the semester but I think the asynchronous videos kind of made up for this. 4) Jose and the TAs quickly responded to questions on Discord or ModMail and provided sufficient online & in-person OH. 5) Expectations for programming assignments, midterms, quizzes, survey, and final project were reasonable. 6) Regrade requests were available for Midterm 1. 7) Enough time was given to complete the programming assignments (~2 weeks), quizzes (~1-3 days), final project (1 month), midterms (3 hours), and survey (1 day). 8) Gave plenty of opportunities for Q&A during lectures One very small con (only because of the staffing issue in the CS department this semester and larger class size) is grading overall took longer than expected. Other than that, I think the course was very well-organized and went according to the original plans and the TAs and Jose did an excellent job making sure all students understood the course content and how to apply it to assignments, etc. Strongly encourage anyone interested in compilers to take this class with Jose. I would give him 6 stars for this review if I could!
Jose Calderon CMSC433 Anonymous 05/12/2023	Its may 12 and i not have a grade lol
Jose Calderon CMSC433 Expecting an A Anonymous 05/03/2023	Jose is a fantastic professor. Clearly knowledgeable about everything he is teaching and passionate. We have 4 assignments this semester which were challenging but extremely doable. His lectures are unique as he goes in and out of the command line doing "live examples" and walking through concepts and ideas with the class. I personally found this style of teaching to be great but it may not be for everyone. We had a TA staffing issue this semester and Jose handled every facet of it super well and the class has run smoothly. I would recommend this class, especially if you enjoy functional programming.
Jose Calderon CMSC330 Expecting an A- Anonymous 03/27/2023	I have the same opinions as most of the reviews here. His lectures align well with projects, quizzes and tests. His office hours are amazing because of his diverse knowledge and he is extremely responsive to emails and piazza. I struggled with his lecture style at first. The way he communicated information during lecture was not organized in a way where he states some topic, underlines it, then gives you the information about it. It's more of a stream of information with no structure and he writes things down that are really important or helpful for visualizing where he's going with a point. You will need to determine the structure of your notes yourself and pay attention to everything he says, not just what he writes down. If you come awake and willing to learn his lectures are full valuable and relevant material.
Jose Calderon CMSC433 Anonymous 03/10/2023	I believe this is Jose's first semester teaching 433 so I think this will be the first review for how he is teaching this class. I haven't included a grade yet as we're only about halfway into the semester and assignments are still being graded. 433's curriculum had changed a lot from the previous semesters so Jose's doing the best he can to restructure the material and it took a while for TAs to get hired because of staffing issues with the CS department, but I think Jose has done an excellent job with the class so far. Grading has been a little slow but again, that's because the course content has changed a lot and Jose's restructuring the class (which has over 250 students!) There are many pros for taking 433 with Jose based on my experience so far and experiences with him in past classes: 1) He and the TAs respond very quickly to messages from students 2) He records all the lectures and uploads them very quickly 3) He provides practice problems and exercises within the lecture notes, which supplement our understanding of the content 4) He and the TAs have plenty office hours (in-person and online available) and they take their time to help students (with very detailed threads for topics in Discord) and teach us how to solve problems with an incremental approach. 5) He organized study groups for our class. Jose is the first CS professor I have ever met who has gone to the effort of doing this for his students (most of the time, study groups for CS classes are done via CMNS or students have to form their own). 6) He is incredibly experienced, has no problems answering students' questions, accommodating, and provides students plenty of resources. 7) He introduced the idea of a student notes sheet (one student takes notes in a Google Doc during each lecture that other students can add upon and leave comments for, which I thought was really clever as I've never had a professor who has done this). 8) He has very creative learning methods. 9) His grading is very constructive and he and the TAs offer feedback about how students can improve. There aren't really any cons I have to list except for grading being a little slow but again, that is because Jose is trying to restructure the material for the 433 class, which has had a major shift in its focus. He has taken this head-on. If I could give Jose six stars, I would! If you get a chance to take a class with him and you're passionate about it (especiallly 216 and 430), take it without a second thought.
Jose Calderon CMSC330 Expecting a B+ theGreat 01/20/2023	Definition of a 5 start professor - great lecturer - genuinely cares about his students - very knowledgable - well structured course - answers emails
Jose Calderon CMSC330 Expecting a B+ Anonymous 12/24/2022	Jose is extremely fair, as is seen in his class and exams. He's also very nice, and his class is highly interactive, and OH open for students. I would note that his teaching style did not jive with me at all, and left me very confused, so I used slides from last year to succeed in the class. Jose may be very popular, but like others have said, I definitely didn't feel the hype.
Jose Calderon CMSC330 Expecting an A Charl1e1029 12/23/2022	So… I will admit that this class was pretty unorganized and left a lot of responsibility to the student. Although they provided us with past exams/quizzes to use as reference, a lot of course material covered in the past was no longer covered this semester, and some new concepts were introduced that weren’t covered in the past so there were no study materials regarding those topics. Other than exams, I though Jose’s lectures were informative and invigorating, and the projects were straightforward and quite do-able. Tokens were provided to give some leeway into submitting projects a bit later with no penalty, but personally I didn’t need to use even a single one.
Jose Calderon CMSC330 Expecting an A+ Anonymous 12/20/2022	To say I was disappointed by the hype surrounding Jose would be an understatement. He is a very down to Earth guy, very caring, and is overall one of the most kind and easy to talk to people in the entire department. Office hours with him were great, he was very approachable and I couldn't have asked for a better professor in that regard. Lecture wise, wow did I really not enjoy them. The biggest flaw to me was Jose's obsession with doing all his teaching on pen and paper rather than utilizing the very very thorough pre-made slides from previous lectures or using a code editor. This made some things such as NFA/DFA a nightmare and anything regarding syntax and coding. Despite Jose's best attempts, I just didn't resonate with how he taught in lectures and often had to go back to previous semesters and look at the slides. I understand he co-taught with Cliff and Cliff is the top dog for this class but even he used slides and others supplementary material to help us understand things outside of lecture, while Jose did not. I'm sure he was busy with his own personal things but I don't see why people think he's one of the best lecturers in the department.
Jose Calderon CMSC330 Expecting an A ceremonialgradematcha 12/18/2022	jose's office hours were very helpful, although the course was not very well-organized. i actually started going to his office hours because the tas couldn't explain project 4 or grammars well, and i think the instructor should be at least partially responsible for making sure the tas know the basic concepts of the course. this course was cotaught with cliff, but the lecture quizzes rarely covered material we in jose's section learned in class, and i think jose should've been more involved with the course organization as well as teaching. he records his lectures, which is great, and his online notes are really helpful, although they're posted about a week after the class instead of right after for some reason. i also think his expectations for us as a class are slightly high. i remember him saying "don't rely on past exams for practice, instead write your own problems" which imo is above and beyond what should be expected of us; the class is challenging enough as is. tl;dr course slightly disorganized but very helpful individually.
Jose Calderon CMSC330 Expecting an A Anonymous 12/17/2022	Just gotta go to lecture and take some notes. Fun class, learned a bunch. Wish we spent more time on Rust though...
Jose Calderon CMSC330 Expecting a B+ Anonymous 12/16/2022	this class genuinely traumatized me
Jose Calderon CMSC320 Expecting an A- Anonymous 12/14/2022	I had some friends who took 216 with him say he was very knowledgeable and good at teaching, so when he was listed I was excited to take him. While I wouldn't say this class has been a wreck, there was a lot of moments that had me think there were flaws with the way the course was taught. In terms of the class itself: the content is quite overwhelming and there are a lot of potential ways to make mistakes and falter. I think the cheating scandal had worn him off and ever since the first exam (and when he went to write on paper) the direction of lectures became more confusing (no slides, writing on paper without having any code editor open), and he took a good deal of time to explain something mediocre compared to the slides that were given from last spring or 1 year ago. He took ~2 lectures for each of opsem, lambda calc, regex/dfa/nfa and the parsing which made the last section of Rust feel extremely rushed. Some peeves that he has that are somewhat grating are 1) constantly telling the room to silence even though there's hardly noise, 2) asking for interaction from the class, but then also 3) making big deals over questions/answers that are misphrased (e.g "method" vs "function"). Each of these aren't too bad on their own but hearing these ~5 times per lecture for 3 months gets a little old. That all said, he still is professional and good at answering questions, while also having some good anecdotes about "good"/"bad" practice and making class quite entertaining. He also has the schedule made so we don't quickly fall behind in projects, so he wasn't all bad. I would say be ready to put more work into a class if you see he's teaching, and that he has some patterns of teaching that don't always suit everyone.
Jose Calderon CMSC330 Expecting an A Anonymous 12/12/2022	Personally I really enjoy Jose's lecturing style. It is very active, he asks a lot of questions of the class. We go through a lot of examples, and most of the lecture is Jose writing or typing out examples. If it's an interactive or syntax-heavy topic he will usually have an interpreter or compiler on his laptop on the projector. If it's more of a conceptual topic he's writing examples out on paper. Humor is subjective so some people may be annoyed by his humor, as well as his pet peeves. If you say "method" when you mean "function/procedure/...", he will say "what do you mean 'method'?" or similar. Same thing with statements vs expressions. I agree with him on the importance of being precise in wording and preserving the actual meaning of words (as long as that is their meaning, though meaning can change through change in use, but functions are NOT methods). Some people may be annoyed by this. Do note that it is not a big thing, and from what I remember it's basically just "method" and "statement" that comes up in 330, and they're pretty important distinctions. To me it feels more like he focuses on things that are dangers to your mental model understanding of the concept. Not understanding the difference between statements and expressions would be bad for your understanding of languages that focus on expressions and mutability. For some other topics loosey-goosey mental models seem to be fine by Jose, where the loose model doesn't harm your understanding. He's not a nitpicker. He rolls with answers to questions even if they're not his preferred way of phrasing or thinking about something. I feel he really tries to connect with the students and which part of a concept they're struggling with, then put more focus on that as needed. The discrepancy between content covered in Jose's lecture and what ends up on the lecture quiz, due to the course being co-taught by Jose and Cliff, is sometimes annoying. However I don't consider it that big a deal since you can use basically any resource for the lecture quizzes; you can consult others, run code samples, etc.
Jose Calderon CMSC330 Expecting a B Anonymous 12/02/2022	His written material could be better, but overall I'm a fan.
Jose Calderon CMSC330 Anonymous 11/18/2022	yeah he doesnt cover exactly whats on the lecture quizzes but he teaches so well that you can learn the underlying concepts and apply them more generally. ive probably learned more from this class than any other cs class i've taken. if you want a curriculum thats a bit closer to what's actually tested, though, cliff would be a better choice
Jose Calderon CMSC330 Expecting an A Anonymous 11/13/2022	I think his teaching style for this class is an acquired taste. He doesn't use slides, but instead handwrites on a piece of paper as he explains a concept. Before last week, he had a problem of not saying the name of a concept he taught so when we got the lecture quiz we were all confused. However, he is very receptive to changing his teaching to fit our needs and it's clear that he is very passionate about CS. He also answers a lot of questions during lecture.
Jose Calderon CMSC330 Expecting a B- Anonymous 11/11/2022	I mustve gotten unlucky or something this semester but Jose has generally been pretty bad. The first average on the exam was a 64% and 70% of the class got caught cheating on it (it was take-home). He focuses too much on the abstractness of a concept and doesn't teach us what we actually need to know. It kinda makes him seem like a smartass. The class is cotaught with Cliff and a lot of the stuff on the lecture quizzes are from Cliff's lectures and are never talked about in Jose's lecture. I was excited to take Jose but I will never register for him again. He is a nice guy but he just seems burnt out from lecturing or something.
Jose Calderon CMSC330 Expecting a B- Anonymous 11/08/2022	I never feel prepared for the lecture quizzes despite paying close attention during lecture and reviewing after. His teaching style is confusing and he only shows examples but doesn't really introduce things. So when there is a question to do a certain operation on something, I don't know what to do because he never said the name of that operation in class. Also, the lecture quiz questions are harder than the examples we did in class. I heard a lot of good things about Jose so I was really looking forward to taking this class with him, but I am left feeling confused after every lecture quiz which is very frustrating. Projects are very fair especially with help from the more accountable TAs, and yes, Jose is engaging and passionate so I'll still give him 4 stars. But I wish there was more organization to his lectures, and I doubt I would be doing as well as I am now if I was also taking CMSC351 at the same time which most people do.
Jose Calderon CMSC216 terpsCompSci12 10/17/2022	This guy is awesome
Jose Calderon CMSC430 Expecting an A Anonymous 08/30/2022	You would be hard pressed to find a professor with more passion, professionalism, kindness, and genuine care for both their work and their students. Jose deserves 6 stars
Jose Calderon CMSC320 Expecting an A Anonymous 05/21/2022	Hands down the best CS professor I have ever had. Very engaging lectures, fair exams, and challenging (but interesting) projects.
Jose Calderon HDCC106 Expecting an A Anonymous 05/09/2022	Passionate about what he teaches, very helpful outside of class, very fair, great guy.
Jose Calderon CMSC430 Anonymous 04/06/2022	Without a doubt the best professor I have ever had and one of the most interesting and well put together classes I have ever taken. Jose is the GOAT, there's no other way to put it. He's passionate, kind, considerate, intelligent, funny, and organized. There is no one I would rather take a class with. He has changed the course of my college career.
Jose Calderon CMSC216 Expecting a C- Anonymous 04/04/2022	He is a good lecturer indeed but I believe good lectures only go so far as if you provide the proper material to grade. I understand that he was not in charge of exam designs but I think washing your hands about it is not the solution. Last semester, when Shankar was in charge of exam design, questions weren't properly worded and the level of difficulty was not in the same range as the time provided. I really hope that changes and they allow more control regarding his course, but I believe that as a teacher, he was required to put his foot down and say: I don't agree with this exam unless you do agree.
Jose Calderon CMSC216 Expecting a B Anonymous 04/02/2022	jose is a good prof mans is the throat goat. def take if available
Jose Calderon CMSC216 Expecting an A Anonymous 01/03/2022	AMAZING
Jose Calderon CMSC216 Expecting an A+ Anonymous 01/02/2022	Great professor, very knowledgeable. However, terribly organized class. Exams and projects took forever to be graded.
Jose Calderon CMSC216 Expecting a B Anonymous 12/28/2021	This man is the greatest professor of all time...
Jose Calderon CMSC216 Expecting an A+ Anonymous 12/27/2021	Amazing lecturer. Always answered questions during lecture very thoroughly, and he seemed very knowledgeable about all of the topics. Would recommend taking him if possible.
Jose Calderon CMSC216 Expecting a C Anonymous 12/25/2021	I agree with all the other review of Jose so I'll keep it short. I'm a sophomore so this was my first semester of in person classes. Jose is the best lecturer I've had during my time at Maryland, or at least he is a solid S tier CS lecturer. Attend lectures and put time into studying the lecture examples he points out. Like actually try modifying the examples and predict what happens when you change something in the example. That's how you study and learn. I never really knew how to study for CS classes until I took 216 with Jose and will be sure to use this method of studying in my future classes. Had I studied the correct way for the earlier exams, I believe attaining at least a B was incredibly doable in this class.
Jose Calderon CMSC216 Anonymous 12/17/2021	Jose is a fantastic professor. He is an incredible lecturer and very patient with students/willing to take questions. His lectures are never boring and his office hours is always super useful. Jose cares about the quality of his teaching and students' understanding a lot more than most professors. If you have the option to take 216 with him, do it. From personal experience he's far better than Shankar, and from what I hear, he's much better than Herman and probably comparable to Nelson.
Jose Calderon CMSC216 Expecting a B- Anonymous 12/16/2021	Great lecturer, very knowledgeable, and took the time to answer questions. I left every lecture with a deeper understanding of the topics we were being taught, it was definitely worth my time to attend. The course itself was pretty mismanaged with tons of pushed deadlines, TA drama, and minimal communication with students, however, I strongly believe this was a product of the course being cotaught with Shankar. I would still go out of my way to take Jose again.
Jose Calderon CMSC216 Expecting a B+ Anonymous 12/14/2021	Jose is fantastic. He is extremely funny, communicates the material well, and is extremely willing to help students learn the material. Take his section if you can.
Jose Calderon CMSC216 Expecting an A Anonymous 12/10/2021	He's a very good lecturer and will make sure you understand the concepts. Highly recommend you take his section if possible.
Jose Calderon CMSC216 Expecting a C Anonymous 12/06/2021	Jose is a great lecturer. He was funny and always took time to go over examples and questions. His exams were challenging but not unfair. An effective lecturer. There were problems with grades coming back slow and TAs not doing their job properly however he did his best to respond and fix these concerns. Highly reccomend.
Jose Calderon CMSC216 Expecting a B Anonymous 12/02/2021	Amazing at lecturing and making the material easy to understand. Seems like a super nice and down-to-earth guy too. You will need to put some work into the class for an A, but with JMT getting a B is super attainable with not a whole lot of effort. If you can, choose Jose for 216 hands down- he also records his lectures which are super convenient.
Jose Calderon CMSC320 Expecting an A+ Anonymous 06/29/2021	Simply fantastic when it comes to lecturing and organizing class materials. He was also a lenient grader and always reachable during this last online semester.
Jose Calderon CMSC320 Expecting an A+ Anonymous 05/28/2021	Probably the best CS teacher I've ever had at UMD. I'll just say this - if this dude was my professor for every single CS class, my life at UMD would have been much easier and so would my GPA. Everything from the quiz policies to the lecture slides were just right. All you had to do to pass quizzes was get 3/5 questions right. The lecture slides were very helpful too because I barely attended any Zoom lectures (only like 1 or 2 lol) and only caught up by skimming over the slides (not that I recommend you do the same) and still was able to have a solid grasp of the material and get an A+ final grade. Furthermore the take-home midterm was a piece of cake. He is extremely understanding - I had some issues at the deadline for projects but he was very lenient about extensions. Don't hesitate at all to take this course with Jose, you will learn a lot about an extremely important field from a super chill teacher while not having a heavy workload and the stress that comes with it.
Jose Calderon CMSC320 Expecting an A+ Anonymous 05/23/2021	I had an amazing time in Professor Calderon's class, I believe he is easily one of the best undergraduate CS professors at UMD. I took this class in Spring 2021. Pros: + Infectious passion about data science, very easily bleeds into his teaching style + Extremely intelligent regarding course material. It is very obvious this isn't his first rodeo + Does his best to make even the most complex material digestable and easy to understand + Answers any and all questions regarding lecture content and project questions + Tests and projects are fair + Plenty of extra credit opportunities Cons: - Lectures would occasionally go long (although this was rarely an issue) - This is barely a con, more a given of most upper level classes, but there is no late deadline; either it's on time, or a 0. However, I would hardly call this unfair, there is plenty of notice as to when projects are due.
Jose Calderon CMSC430 Anonymous 05/19/2021	Fall 2020 Semester. MVP. I'm not aware of another professor that makes the material so accessible.
Jose Calderon CMSC320 Anonymous 03/07/2021	Great professor, cares about his students and is chill during class.
Jose Calderon CMSC430 Anonymous 02/13/2021	Such a great professor. Literally so sweet and makes the best lectures ever. Actually gets me excited to learn about compilers. Lectures are really well put together and fun to watch.
Jose Calderon CMSC430 Anonymous 02/01/2021	very chill professor
Jose Calderon CMSC430 Expecting an A+ tybug 12/20/2020	Fantastic professor. Knows his stuff and he clearly cares about making sure the students understand the material and do well in the class. For 430 specifically, we had 6 projects and they each took a fair bit of time (5-7 hours), but over the course of a semester that really isn't so bad. Definitely a reasonable amount of work for the class.
Jose Calderon CMSC430 Expecting an A+ Anonymous 12/16/2020	Jose is super nice and understanding of students concerns and needs. Assignments were super interesting and pretty fair, if you have a good understanding of the course material and Racket. Online class consisted of asynchronous YouTube videos with corresponding lecture notes on the website. Really learned a lot from the class and he was great!
Jose Calderon CMSC430 Expecting a B+ Anonymous 12/16/2020	He's a great teacher. He takes time to explain the concepts in detail. This course is about compilers and as you'd imagine, the class might cover some low level stuff, which can be confusing. But Jose takes time to break down everything so you can understand. He doesn't overload students with a lot of homework; he gives just the right amount of quizzes and assignments to help understand the material. Projects are mainly an extension of the concepts thought; if you understand his explanations, doing the projects shouldn't be complicated. In terms of availability, he's always willing to extend his office hours to accommodate students. If you really want to learn, take his class.
Jose Calderon CMSC430 Expecting an A Anonymous 11/30/2020	honestly the coolest dude i've ever met, really knows his stuff and is super laid back. incredibly accommodating for the whole distance learning thing, too.