| Information | Review |
|---|---|
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Zaoxing Liu
Expecting an A- Anonymous 10/08/2024 |
Take any class Liu teaches and do yourself a favor. seemed like a good prof and you should expect a good grade if you study. Took 414 before and now taking a new course with him. Overall chilled prof and care about students. Sometimes he teaches too fast though. |
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Zaoxing Liu
CMSC414 Expecting an A Anonymous 09/30/2024 |
I got an A and I learned a lot from the class. Pros: Dr. Liu is a nice guy. He was engaging, knowledgeable, and can explain things well. His lectures were good. He was a generous grader I can tell and he gave extensions. email and piazza response were fast. Cons: Some topics cover like ML security was not fitting the scope of the course well. One thing was that all sections of the course had some late turnaround on projects and midterms, which really annoyed people. His TAs were medicore - made a lot of mistakes. I gave 5 star just for the prof but the TAs. |
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Zaoxing Liu
Expecting a B Anonymous 09/27/2024 |
I got a B in this class because the TA's said I had the correct output when I didn't. |
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Zaoxing Liu
CMSC414 Expecting an A Anonymous 05/19/2024 |
Note: I believe Professor Liu's U.S. name is Alan Liu, so all of his other reviews are listed on PT under that name. That being said, Alan is a great dude, and I would say that he teaches the course well. If you like to break stuff (in the software sense) then this is the course for you. This course is like the opposite of CMSC417 project-wise. Projects don't require nearly as much code - sometimes you an pass a test case with just 4, 5 lines - however, they still require a significant time investment. A lot of the effort that is used to complete it is spent on *thinking* and not actually programming because you're trying to induce a particular type of behavior that isn't supposed to happen. Don't be surprised if you have to sit and think for 75-80% of the time or play around with a bunch of different values based on what you understand about the computer architecture/processing before you start to actually implement a solution. Exams and projects are fair if you don't slack off, and he even provides a one-time no excuse extension. I definitely learned a lot in this course, not just security-wise but in general with topics including but not limited to SQL, DNS, TLS, x86 Assembly, Torr, etc. I would def recommend. |