John B. Hodges, Jr.

Dr. Hodges is a great Professor in the CS department. His class is not easy, but what he gives to you is really useful for your career future. I am very enjoyed in his class even though with less sleep but it is fun!!! If he still open classes, I will take again because he just tells you what true is in the real world. He is busy, however he often spends a lot time in the HH302, I cannot find any other instructor like him. His talk with students is so warm, and from his mind, his heard, which you can not hear from the class lecture. I learn more and more from him, not only from his lecture, web site, but also from his personal talk. CSC667 is great class, I have a wonderful study experience!!! Thanks Dr. Hodges!

I heard terrible things about him before I took the class, and it was indeed hell throughout the semester. But, I learned, to learn by myself and some stuffs. He gave tough projects, tough exams (avg of 18 in midterm). His lecture sometimes was like a project discussion on some design issues, in addition to those quick slides... He was very demanding. When he expected to see certain things, we must, MUST, do it that way. He was fair with the grade, I think I deserve what I got. In fact, quite a number of ppl got A. I actually learned a lot more in 410 than any other programming classes. It was a class that built my C++ foundation. After this class, I am confident with my programming skills, don't have much problem with other programming classes, and bring the projects I did to job interviews. This class could prepare students for real world fast pace engineering work, where the bosses demand a lot more. I agree sometimes he acts weird (who doesn't), but sometimes he is nice to students (he made ice-cream and brought it to his students... believe or not). I don't hate him nor the class like some ppl do.

I enjoyed learning from Dr. Hodges. Unlike many other professors, he forced me to think about problems and not just regurgitate information. Yes, I had to work hard. Yes, I had to spend a lot of time on the material. But it was worth it. A highly-motivated student will learn a lot from Dr. Hodges. There were many times that I did not understand the lecture material, but he was always willing to help me during office hours.

Students in his class are like players and he is like an opponent. At the beginning, you have no idea how to do your work, but the instructor will not help you. Most of time, you feel confused about his requirements of homeworks and projects because they are not clear, therefore, you need to read the homework many times and guess what they mean. In the class, it is boring because he doesn't prepare to teach you, first he askes you whether you have question about the projects or hws, but you know, what questions you can ask if he teaches you nothing!!! He repeats the slides if no questions. I get nothing from him except a lot of commands, do this, do that. Believe me, he has no idea how to teach in class. There is only one point which I like is the project because it is about game, so I just learn from myself.

Dr. Hodges is a special Prof. He makes students hard work. I feel also painful in his class. He doesn't tell us how to do something exactly, then you have to take a lot of time to find out the issue what he is talking about. However, I really learn more from his class even thougth it is not derectly from him. Because I found you can learn a lot of things just following the rule what he says, in this way you can learn from yourself, from your hws and your projects, but first you have do a lot of work. Now I understand the basic how to design a game in c++, that is great feeling.

Dr. Hodges cared a lot about the standard and quality of education. He cares about the quality of the students that are in his class. He gives a fair credit to those who worked really hard. He had sacrificed his time in the late evenning to help students debug their proram. He raised the quality of the computer science dept.

How to pass the class.

Go and see him if you do not understand. He will help you when you really need it. Try to understand terms like Gui, Environment and Sprite.

Show the interest that you want to learn.

Things I wished could be improved

More time on lecture. Hopefully the 313, 413 will help this situation.

Explain why we need to do the things he wanted us to do. Also, more explanation on the things he wanted us to do. For example, what does it mean to be "consistent".

You will learn a lot from his web page.

The good things I like about this class.

(Even though its a painful experience)

Students get good internship by showing what they did in 410.

You will build confidence in yourself.

Lets face it, Hodges is far from the best lecturer in the CS department (Eisman wins that hands down), but Hodges is the best programmer the CS department has. Hes self-righteous, moody, arrogant and hard to talk to, just like anybody else who really knows the s**t. If you want his knowledge you have to extract it in his protocol, theres no other way.

If you dont whine in his classes, know the work is going to be challenging and very time consuming and just do it and give some thought to your question youll come out of any Hodges class knowing more than you will with any other professor.

I think Prof Hodges is pretty knowledgeable on the subject matter. The only bad thing about him is that he does not understand how to convey his thought to most of students. I think he should use his effort to explain the lab assignment. Writing a project involves with more than 10,000 lines of code is not the major problem, it is the explanation is simply not clear.

If you want to learn sth. from him, do not take his class. He supposed the students knew the material covered in the class before we took his class. And in his lecture,he only talked to few students who already were a good programmer. However, if I were a good programmer, why did I take his class? So before you take his class, evaluate yourself first. You need to be PH.D. candidate who is really smart and learn on his own to pass his class.

I spend so many hours for this class. It wasn't easy class. The major reason was because I didn't know C++ well. I feel that if the department offer a class between 301 and 410, this class will be much effective for anyone who likes to learn programming. The only ways to learn in this class is that stop complains and does the work you need to do. Most of the people have bad image about Dr.hodges even before they take his class. This is not helping anyone. I have seen him helping people debugging and explaining about material to students even the after his office hours. If anyone want to learn from this class, you have to give him a chance. I leaned a lot. And I think he is a good teacher.

His class is tough and requires lots of work, but that does not mean he is a bad instructor. He stays his office to help debuging and make problems straight out for students during the semester. The problem of 410 is not on him but on the CSc major calculum ( gap between 301 and 410 ).

This is one of the toughest programming class I ever took. I thoroughly enjoy programming. But taking this class as a full time student and getting a good grade is not possible. The expected hours of work for this class is outrageous. I spend around 10 to 15 hours a week on programming assignment and most of my peers spend a lot more than that.(20 plus hours) My grade reflects the lack of time I spend doing my projects. The test for this class is really tough. The average was around 20+ out of a 100 but it doesn't really count so you don't need to worry about it. The reason I gave him such a bad grade is that his lecture is not good. He just goes over slide after slide. When you ask him a question, his first task is to put you down then he will answer the question. I don't know how some of the students were able to get to him during his office hour. There were always a long line. And the two times I made an appointment to see him I had to wait for more than an hour passed my appointment to see him. I wonder why I even bother to make an appointment. I guess his time was too valuable to waste on me. If you have ton of time on your hand with nothing to do then take the class and write some code. You will write ton of code but you don't learn much about data structure though.

As I know, this class is very important to the students who are the major in Computer Science. However, it is very hard to pass this course because there is only one teacher to teach this class. I think that there is a large gap between the class Csc301 and Csc410. Students are pretty hard to pick up everything at the time that they enroll the class Csc410. In addition, the work load in that class Csc410 is pretty tough and a lot. If any student trys to take that class with the other computer classs together, it looks quite hard in their life..Good Luck!!!

Dr. Hodges is a very moody teacher. His lectures are boring and not much different from his slides. However, his choice of projects as well as textbooks help you learn a LOT. As Computer programmer's it is essential to learn it the hard the way in school rather than never to learn at all -- and face it all in the industry. The course requires a tremendous amount of work but at the end of the semester you have mastered the art of neat programming. Talk to Hodges during his office hours. He is not always a bad guy.

The topic of CSC410 is very interesting, you will learn a great deal of programming and of course you will program A LOT. This class gives you a taste of how it's like to be a programmer, if you don't like programming, why border being a computer science major? Dr. Hodges prepare his class well, lecture materials are on the web, he updates the web site frequently, new material, homework, etc, so do check up the web site before you do the homework. Lectures include a lot of discussion about project and homework. I encourage everyone to ask question if you don't understand. Email him all of your questions, your confusion, and I assure that you will get friendly reply. If you are learning to program, Dr. Hodges is someone that you want to learn from, he spends time to debug your program, to discuss your design, help you with your frustration. In CSC410, you can get the most out of the whole CS department in SFSU, especially if you take it with Dr. Hodges. Think about it, if you tell people that you wrote a game in Data Structure class, it will be very impressive; it helps you to get a job! CSC690 programs in JAVA, we learn JAVA with Dr. Hodges, it's very exciting to see our own program running on the web.

I came into Hodges' C++ class with a lot of enthusiasm and a bit of experience in programming. It was ridiculous how much work he gave and how little it had to do with the lectures. Throughout the semester 2/3 of the class dropped out and only 1 of the remaining 8 students was actually able complete the final project. After this class I dropped out of the Computer Science major!

Hodges is the worst kind of terrible professor. He isn't a good programmer. His assignments reflect his ignorance. His goal seems to be piling up lots of work.

Lots of work is ok if there's alot to be learned. The average student will need to spend atleast 25 hours a week on his assignments. The payback in terms of knowledge and skills acquired is RIDICULOUSLY small compared to the amount of work.

He is pretentious and incompetent.

Unfortunately, through some incredible act of stupidity on the behalf of the incompetent CS faculty, it is now necessary to pass his 415 class to get through the program.

If you're going to take his class, be prepared to spend long, frustrating hours deciphering what this idiot wants.

HAVE A LIGHT LOAD THE SEMESTER YOU TAKE THIS CLASS. Csc410 with Hodges is the hardest class in CompSci major. I see that now they've added a lab class. His lectures don't tell you much. Nevertheless I learned a lot from this class, but I learned it all on my own. We had one project for the whole semester, a maze game in Unix using Curses. We were the "guinea pig" semester (Spring 97). You will spend 25-30 hours a week programming. You'll go to the lectures just to try to figure out what you should be doing. He doesn't update his website enough. If you're the kind of person that doesn't usually talk to a professor during office hours (as I am), reconsider it for this class. Don't take any other hard classes while taking 410 from Hodges. The tests are terrible. No one does well. I am philosophically opposed to grading curves but without it no one would pass the tests. No one needs to have all that memorized. Why does he have all those reference books in his office? Because *he* doesn't have it memorized either, but expects you to. I took this course knowing C but not C++. Boy, did I learn a lot. It was very hard, and very stressful, but I learned a lot. I wrote something like 600K of code, when the final program was compiled it was over a meg of executable code. On the bright side, if you get an A you get the admiration of others. If you do badly in another class and manage to make your professor aware that you received an A in 410, they may feel more kindly toward you. "You got an A from Hodges? You must be good. This bad test must have been a fluke, I'll raise your grade a little." One last comment: Hodges has a very dry sense of humour. You may think he's being mean (and sometimes he is) but often he doesn't mean it in a bad way. Don't let it get to you. But you will work very hard in this course.

In terms of lecturing, Dr. Hodges is terrible because all he does is go over slides. You can basically just read the stuff in the book (slides online), and never go to class. The programming projects are insane, you need to spent at least 30 hours per week. He doesn't explain well what he wants on the projects unless you spent alot of time talking to him in his office. We had to program a maze game using a Unix library Curses, so you have to learn Curses too!You will not learn much data structure because you never need to create one since most of the data structure code are provided for you but you have to do minor modification. His tests are vague and confusing with stuff you could never study. The best you can do is get a 50% total score on his tests. You do learn a great deal by doing the projects because the projects are so huge, and you will became a better programmer because of this. Basically, you learn everything on your own out of necessity in order to pass the class. But, Dr. Hodges is not that bad of a person to talk with even tough it's sometimes hard to understand him. Dr. Hodges is willing to a lot of time helping students debugging, giving code if necessary. Since Data Structure is the key class you have to take it, probably with Dr. Hodges. So quite a number of students have fled to Hayward to take their Data Structure class. If you can survive his class, you are the best!!!