Connely, John  

he knows what he's talking about, he knows how to make you understand what he's talking about, and he knows that you don't understand it the first time. he made assembly as exciting at assembly can be. i'm gonna take him for any class he teaches.

In two years being here at Cal Poly, Dr Connely is the best teacher I have had. HE is entertaining and makes the material simple to understand. I always looked forward to his class. He is a very fair teacher and his midterms are simple but thorough. The programs are and if you need help, he'll gladly give it to you. I would take him every chance I get.

Connely's an excellent professor. I've had him for two classes so far, and his teaching style has been consistent. He's very clear and thorough in lecture, and is superb at fielding questions. He is very helpful in all situations (class, lab, office hours). His programming assignments are representative of the material, and are very reasonable in terms of time expectations. His tests are also quite good, testing only important concepts (you will never find a "trivia" question"). I'd strongly recommend Dr. Connely for this, or any other class.

This guy knows what he is talking about, and his explanations are very clear. Just, don't try to talk to him about new technology. He just knows the A-Z information that is presented in the course.

I could go on and on about how great of a teacher Dr. Connely is, but that would be grossly repetitive. In short: If you have the opportunity to take Dr. Connely, DO IT!!! If you want to know more about his teaching style, read the reviews below.

Dr. Connely is a great teacher and he conveys the subject he is teaching extremely well. He is a very fair grader and tests you on the material that has been discussed and learned in class or in lab. I recommend him for any class he is also a really good teacher for CSC 453

Dr.Connely is the best teacher I've had for all the years I've been at Cal Poly. He's dedicated to his students, always willing to go the extra mile to make sure his students understand the materials. The tests and programs are straight-forward and reasonable. Take this instructor whenever he teaches because he's part-time retired.

you learn C and some unix stuff. he has a nice way of teaching, where he repeats old stuff every few days, which makes it feel like youre not learning anything, but you are. just keep in mind the big picture cause he never really tells you what it is. just tons of random data to form an unfinished picture at the end of the quarter.

Dr. Connely is one of the best professors I've had at calpoly. He loves to teach and loves it when students learn. He explains things in such a way as to make even the slowest learners catch on. The pace is very appropriate as well. He constantly goes back to old concepts and ideas to reinforce our knowledge of them, so by the end of the quarter we know all of it very well. I'd use my priority any quarter to have him as a professor again.

CPE x317 was a worthwhile introduction to the C programming language. Dr. Connely taught the class in a rather un-object oriented way (lots of globals, etc) which rubbed the wrong way with a lot of us, but still taught lots of useful C and UNIX commands and options. Lecture could get a bit dry at times and labs were completely pointless (ungraded and the lab hour and a half was pointless, there was no lecture, just the TA pacing across the rows) and Dr. Connely's TA that did the grading on tests was overly harsh (we could take our tests to Dr. Connely and get some points back). There were 5 programs, 5 labs, and 4 quizzes, none of which were horrendously challanging. Pay attention in lecture and read a few man pages. The books struck me as totally pointless. Overall, I though Dr. Connely did a nice job teaching the course and the C language to the class, and I would definetly recommend taking this course with him.

Dr. Connely presents material in a concise, logical way and takes a lot of time to explain it from a number of different view points. Unfortunately, he tends to drone on and the class can become rather boring. It is conceivable that the amount of material covered could have been quite a bit more if he went at a pace expected for a 300-level course. This course felt like a 100-level in that there was no real intensity. This course is /NOT/ for the "creative coder." The course ran like clockwork with midterms and programs due every 2 weeks. I personally recommend him - but have a coffee before you go to class.

Connely fucking rocks. Lectures present the material crystal clear and the labs make it hard for you not to understand the concepts. Tests you on exactly what you need to know, most of the times. Go over those crazy handouts and you should be fine. Connely is straight pimpin' fa sho.

AN AWESOME PEROFESSOR AND PERSON. Dr. Connely is one of the best teachers I've ever had. I learned ALOT from him about C and UNIX. Not only he teaches well and is always there to help you out with problems (via email, and during office hours), his attitude toward students is impressing. I think he should be role model for anyone who wants to become a teacher. Take him if you get a chance.

[Note: CPE-357 was CPE-x317, but I took 357] Great teacher, nice guy. He gives four exams, the lowest of which are dropped. Most people did bad on the first exam, so be prepared for it. The labs are assigned weekly and involve trying out various features (like malloc, sbrk, etc.), rather than writing complete programs. Five programs are all different versions of a program that uses a database, using arrays, linked list, binary search trees, and hash tables. My only complaint about this class is the required textbooks on C and Unix. Connely said he'd assign specific reading out of these books, but only did once. With some prior C and Unix knowledge, I could have done without them, but if you're new to C and Unix you might want to buy them like he suggests. Also, sometimes Connely (or his grader) makes mistakes on the exams. Fortunately, he will kindly give you the points you deserve if you bring the misgradings to his attention. Recommended.

great attitude and good teacher... what more can you ask for?

Professor Connely is a nice man, a good lecturer, but an extremely easy teacher. If you are looking for a challenge, don't look for it here. It is just about unnecessary to open the books; he goes over EVERYTHING you will need to know for the tests in lecture, and he gives lecture notes all typed up in class. If you wait long enough, he will also give generous hints about the programs in class. You will learn from this man, but you will not be pushed.

no real need to go on about connely. he's a no-nonsense guy. he doesn't give you material that you dont need to know, and he doesn't give you extra work which wont factor into anything in the class. He's a great teacher, and if you can take him before he retires, do so.

John may be a nice man, but he's a rather booring and unorganized teacher. His lectures are tiresome and monotone and he doesn't put very much effort into anything he writes (test, lecture notes, announcements). He frequently has to correct several errors on the test as the class is taking it. The questions on his tests are often misleading, poorly written, and ambiguous. An Example, one question asked us: "Write out pseudo code for the producer-consumer problem either as given in your book or as in the handout. Comment your code." A lot of people answered this question and got it 100% wrong, apparently he wanted us to write out the pseudocode for one of the SOLUTIONS to the problem. Also, his lecture notes are practically worthless. It seems as if this professor is tired of teaching and doesn't care enough to put more time into the class.

Let me throw my two cents about 317 and 453 with Dr.Connely. I took CPE 317 and CPE 453 with Dr.Connely in Fall 2004. I have had enough exposure and experience in C and C++ programming, and I did not really have a very difficult time with both classes. I liked 453 better than 317, may be because I knew most of the material in 317, but I learned a lot of new things in 453. I thought the way Dr.Connely taught 317 was fair enough, and there were a lot of people who got better grades than me. There are a lot of memorization involved in 453 which threw some people off. But some of the concepts he taught in 453 were a bit ambiguous. It's easy to get good grades in labs and programs in both classes. Tests are a bit hard in 453 unless you know all the concepts clearly. Tests in 317 were fair, and I think the class average was pretty high. Final exam was worth about 30% and the difficulty level was similar to the four tests he gave during the quarter. Dr.Connely is a nice person, and he is willing to help students out at any point. And of course, he is easier than Nico, Smith or Keen. But Dr.Connely teaches only in the fall quarters. I highly recommend taking CPE 317 and/or CPE 453 with Dr.Connely.

I got a B, I got a D on one exam, a C- on another, and an A on the last midterm. He throws out one of four. The labs and programs are a cake walk if you know how to code. You should know how if you are taking 453. He is decent and like others say he's easier than nico.

Ok....the reviews prior pretty much say it all, so im just going to throw my 2 cents in. I like Dr. Connely..and i recommend him. However, as the previous review says there is alot of memorization. I had aced nearly EVERY assignment in the class and he gave me a B. I must have bombed the final but i doubt it. I saw him make several grading mistakes this quarter.....so watch him.

Dr. Connely is awesome! He assigns 4 projects and 4 labs that are due every other week interchangably. He is great with helping you on any problems that you might have. The level of difficulty for the projects and labs are fair. Actually maybe too easy. I had no problems with them whatsoever, and I'm a CPE who doesn't enjoy programming. There are 4 tests and he drops your lowest grade. The final is fashioned like those tests, with just a little review of previous material. All in all, Dr. Connely is the best prof to take for any upper division programming classes. He doesn't overwhelm you with super hard programs, and he lectures very well. He is also a very approachable, kind, and warm person. The only thing is, I believe he only teaches in the fall, so plan your schedules wisely!

Too easy. Old guy that should be retired. 4 labs and 4 programs, all of which weren't really challenging at all. Best 3 out of 4 midterms, that cover a lot of material. It's all cumulative. He lets you use a calculator for the tests with calculating questions (almost all of them.) Credit on problems is basically all or nothing, and there is almost no curve. His lectures are really really boring. He makes the most ridiculous connections to real-life situations. He also has the most terrible programming practices I've ever seen in any CSC professor. He uses gets(), magic numbers all over the place, comments with //, makes you print your source code and sample run on PAPER, doesn't always check the return value of system calls, writes plain text files as HTML files with <plaintext>, and sometimes makes you change them to get file I/O working.. it's just too much. He's a nice guy, though. This was my easy class for the quarter, which was kinda odd because I was expecting to work a lot and learn a lot like we did in 357. Sad part is, I probably learned more from him than I would have with O'Gorman. Lots of things seem like 315 and 357 review, and he makes you learn random useful things such as UNIX utilities and regular expressions (regex).

Every CSC teacher should adopt Connely's attitude and teaching style.

This guy is strange. For what he wants to teach, he's great. He'll make the strangest metaphors you'll ever hear, and they do actually help. The problem is, that it's just too easy. I didn't really feel I learned much in this class. About 2/3's of the class felt like some form of review from 357 or 315. There are 4 programs and 4 labs, all very easy. For the programs he basically tells you how to do them in the descriptions, as with the labs, except for the labs he provides code and just tells you to change some lines here and there to make it work. It's all very easy. I did learn a broad range of things though, or at least learned that they exist. The tests are really easy as long as you just listen to his lectures and study a bit. I actually got a 60/60 in one of them. Overall not bad guy or class. But you might learn a lot more with other professors.

Taking this instructor is like being in a Twilight Zone episode. You just can