Dekhtyar, Alex  

His lectures were boring and poorly executed. However, if you think you have any questions concerning the material, ask them during the lecture. He is not easy to approach during labs and gets somewhat moody if you ask him a question during the lab. Don't be surprised if some instructions on the labs or labexams are unclear or some of the sample outputs are incorrect, this is normal for him. The key to passing the labexams is staying calm. I have seen many a student who didn't pass because they were panicky and weren't thinking straight. Be confident, you can do it!

Very glad that I took Alex. I highly recommend him.

Dekhtyar is not a very nice guy. He has no sense of respect and it is hard to ask him for help a lot of the time.

Even alex didnt rock the class. But he didnt suck as well. He would give you a lot of handouts during the quarter. You still can self-teaching with the handouts, even he couldnt explain the materials clearly. We had 9 programs in one quarter, some of them were making the PPM files which were usd to display the images. I think making PPM was not easy, and you might receive bad grades from PPM programs. His midterms were not hard, you could have sample midterms before the actuall tests, so you would know what the midterms would look like.The curve was the way harder than midterms, but he would do curve for you.

The worse teacher at Cal Poly. Hard to understand and thinks he is above the students. I had to retake the class and I am now doing well because my new teacher actually explains what he is teaching and does not expect us to know it already.

Dekhtyar doesn't teach the material well. He thinks that all his students understand the lecture, and throughout the quarter you will find that he thinks his students have "prior knowledge" of programming I would recommend taking a different professor. If you haven't have prior programming experience, I would recommend you take another professor. If you do have prior experience go right on ahead as this is an introductory class.

Overall, Dekhtyar is a pretty cool professor. The class is hard, and he at least makes it a little less painful. He does have a Russian accent, but it\'s not that bad once you get used to it. So are the stutters, but you get over it and it doesn\'t really inhibit the material at all. No need to take notes, he prints everything out. Although, the handouts do have a few mistakes from time to time and can get a little confusing (since sometimes what he lectures about or writes on the board is a little different than what he handed out), but he\'s pretty good at correcting or explaining himself if there is a mistake. There are labs due about once a week and are quite lengthy and big. Their like smaller projects you might see in other courses. They ask you to a lot of analysis of data and putting it in a report. There were two midterms and a final that mostly covered the basics of the algorithms covered in class, and then had a few problems that asked you to derive your own algorithm to solve a problem (which could be a modification of one of the other algorithms). These latter were always a bit harder, but the test was graded in a manor that you weren\'t heavily penalized for not being able to do these and could easily pass the class with a B. Easily Top 5 Professor I\'ve taken.

Material is mostly straightforward and easy to understand, but the lectures are painfully and unnecessarily long. Dekhtyar just isn't good at being concise. Most people will either tune him out or skip class entirely. It's that awful. Labs are also long, but okay. Exams are surprisingly hard, but the class on whole isn't.

This professor is obviously enthusiastic about his subject material. He does his best to present it in the most interesting way possible. He's not the most organized though, and his handouts typically contain typos. Even so, he's pretty good at answering questions and will always try to help students out.

Absolute worst professor ever!! Avoid taking him. He will make your life a living hell. Study 25-35 is something he takes to heart. And that is simply for his class. He loves to start his courses in the beginning with useless projects building what packages you will use later. We built our own stupid database, while learning nothing useful, only to uses SQL later. His specs are wayyy to long (i.e. 12 to 16 pages) and very confusing. He's not able to feel for the class difficulty and never gives you a break. Also, in my two quarters I had with him, I ended up taking the midterm TWICE! Not two separate midterms, no, the same fucking one. Why? Because he lost them during grading. Total BS. Instead of taking the blame, we all just take the midterm again. I don't understand him and why he is even still a professor.

This is my 6th course with Alex Dekhtyar. With this surplus of experience, I hope that my comments can outweigh some of the negative feedback that I was mildly surprised to see here. Some important information about any class you take in his class: 1) Alex knows his shit! Anyone who says otherwise should be ignored. Whether its for class or anything remotely related to databases or data science, Alex is a fantastic resource during office hours. 2) Alex considers lab assignments to be small-scale projects. Yes, these involve more work than most 'lab assignments' at Cal Poly but Alex is very very flexible with due dates (WHEN YOU COMMUNICATE WITH HIM). These projects are very practical and excellent material to discuss with interviewers BECAUSE they are more involved. 3) Individual and group projects are extremely educational! Almost always, the project allows you to apply whatever you have been learning in lecture / labs to something you find interesting. The projects force students to think about how to tackle problems that contain the full software development lifecycle (from the inception of the idea to design to the implementation to presenting these results) I cannot emphasize how valuable these experiences have been in preparing me for industry. 4) If you need an extremely engaging and meticulously organized lecturer... Do NOT take his class. Despite this shortcoming, he is great at answering questions in class or in office hours. (In my experience, the people who complain the most, do very little to help themselves and expect to be spoon-fed the answers to everything) 5) I have never had to purchase a textbook for a course with Alex! If you excel at learning from the notes or assignments, you will do just fine in his classes. (Read the notes ahead of time / during lecture. Pay attention to the examples he does so you can gauge what will be on the midterms...)

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Alex is a bit of a conundrum... You will go through the Quarter not knowing you grade on Labs/Programs till the very and (and even when the Quarter is over you won't know too much besides your final grade letter). This is one element of the class I wish Alex could have done differently, having feedback on your assignments and at least having an idea of where you stand in the class come finals week would be nice. Alex tends to assign A LOT of work (for example 4 concurrent assignments). You should have a light course load when you take a class Alex is teaching. It will require you take most of your free time working on material for his class. That being said, if you have the time to spend you can do well. There aren't hidden test cases or strange things that popup on Labs/Programs. If you code the program to the specifications in his pdfs you will do well. Alex also tends to be a bit flexible on due dates, I think this is because he recognizes most students simply can't be putting in hours of work every day so as long as you finish the programs that is the most important part. If you've never had a class with him before and like a challenge give Alex a try.

Dr. Dekhtyar is great. He truly cares about the students and enjoys teaching. Sometimes I would get lost during his lectures--though this was probably just me and my lack of loving algebra. A fellow grad student put it best: \"Any Dekhtyar class is worth taking.\"