Alexander, Dekhtyar  

Bad

Pretty good professor, prepared us well for the final exam and got through most all of the course material. Even helped me resolve a few "mistakes" I made in the quarter that would have doomed me to failing the class otherwise. I don't know if I would take Dekhtyar again as his humor can be dry and he can come off as a bit rash sometimes in dealing with students, but he was very understanding with me. He can also tend to rant about the results of midterms. It probably helped that I had some programming background going into this course as well. Dekhtyar is not a bad teacher if you're completely new to programming, but there are probably better teachers out there.

Dekhtyar definitely assigns a load of work, but I feel like most programming classes assign about the same (as observed of my friends who had other teachers). If you pay attention to his lectures in class and read the note handouts, you don\'t even have to read the book. His midterms were easy enough, I took one thinking it was a quiz and aced it. His PPM programs can kick your butt if you don\'t really understand them, but Dekhtyar is a nice patient guy if you can be nice and patient with him. If anything proves he\'s a good teacher it\'s how easy the final was (all CPE101 students took the same one regardless of their prof), and I\'m not a gifted programmer.

Alex is a teacher that is hard, but you thank him for it later. He assigned a lot of work and he is not easy. He does cover a lot of material and he loves to teach. I only had to read the book once because he explains everything in the lectures. The homework does take the maximum amount of time assigned and it gets easier when you have a partner or a group of them. Just watch out for his BO cause he stinks and that\'s why most people don\'t ask him for help during lab.

Okay CPE 101 teacher, goes over content thoroughly but some content just gets explained in wayyyy too much detail. For example, we spent a whole day on what an int is in C, not needed imho. That aside, this guy is NO HELP in lab whatsoever. I came up to him once, asking for a little help in debugging and he just told me to go look it over again. Wtheck man? Other than that, he's a cool guy outside of class, has awkward stutters, and a cool Russian accent.

DURRRRR, that's what you will hear from dekhtyar about 50% of the time. He tends to stutter a LOT during class. I found it funny sometimes how much he did it. CPE 101 is an easy class if you have prior programming knowledge as there is a lot of work in dekhtyar's class and if you don't know how to program well you are pretty much screwed. Some programs too a while, while the others took less than 2 hours. Dekhtyar know's his stuff when it comes to C but he needs to refocus his class on the important stuff, such as not spending a week on what an if statement is and focus on more important things such as structs or file i/o. I understand that it was an intro class but really a whole week on an if statement? too much in my opinion. Overall dekhtyar's class was relatively easy but his lectures were pretty damn boring...

As opposed to the reviewer beneath me, I never noticed Dekhtyar stutter. I knew how to program going in to the class and didn't find it too difficult but Dekhtyar made it enjoyable.

BEWARE. CPE 101 is honestly nearly impossible to pass if you've never had any programming experience in your life, like me going into this class. It was a nightmare of a class for me throughout the entire quarter, and my other classes' grades suffered as a result. Alex is extremely intimidating. He assigns honestly and endless and unrealistic amount of work, considering you probably have 3-4 other classes with this. I do not know how you pass this class if it's your first time coding. And I did not blow off this class; I never missed a lecture, just failed at coding, failed all quizzes and midterms and most likely the final. 48% and 34% were my midterm scores. Seems to favorite the students who know what they're doing/have taken it before. I super highly recommend taking advantage of going to the FREE CPE tutoring they have during the week, every day, 7-9pm. I very often went, still failed the class. Alex taught as if everyone had some sort of programming experience. I felt constantly lost and never felt calm/comfortable during this class. I hate Alex. Please do not take him, I am sure there are better teachers out there!

Dekhtyar assigned a lot of long programs that took a long time to understand what he wanted, but throughout it all, I felt like he was an excellent professor. His lectures were always very clear, and I liked how he printed us lecture notes every day to show us the topics he was going to cover. He must have killed so many trees printing us all of that stuff, but it helped A LOT, referring back to it and etc. Although I barely passed, he was still pretty awesome to have as my first intro to C. He really does care!!! And now that I'm finishing up my 102 course, looking back, Dekhtyar really prepared me for all this with his lengthy programs.

Awful

I thought he was good but he assigns too much homework...

Honestly I wish I had the other professor for DATA 301. Alex is nice, but we're reusing material from CPE 365, and honestly his material is just boring.

I'm not a big fan of Dekhtyar. He lectured incessantly (even lecturing during labs far too often), and our class somehow still managed to be a week and a half behind Dr. Migler's sections by the end of the quarter. He constantly managed to talk for a large amount of time without conveying much information at all. He never finished grading our lab reports (or even started grading them). What we were tested on was more consistent with the book and the homework than it was with his lectures. There isn't that much coding or even work in general for 349, which I thought was a little disappointing because the material is very interesting. Didn't have a great time with Dekhtyar, but the material was easy enough that I didn't need to.

Hard to follow this guys lectures

Yeah, Alex is awesome. I had this guy for 101 4 years ago and he hasn't changed a bit. Like most of use, he is lazy and has better stuff to do. This means that you won't know if your labs are 100% correct till week 7 and that isn't good news cause you need to build off them for the rest of the labs. Yet, this class is very easy to pick up. SQL is also an essential when it comes to how data is stored. You will learn a lot in this class. I cannot stress the importance of this class. As to difficulty, it's tedious, not hard. The tedious curve starts hard, curves down then up to create a U shape. The reason it get's hard at the end again is because of java/SQL integration called JDBC. But you won't have to worry about that till the end and he explains the integration well enough for it to work (oh and there is a GUI too). The Midterm and Final will have tons of code to write by hand so make sure to stretch your hand once in a while. Overall, great class. Glad I took it. -IF66

This class is a whole bunch of busy work. There are labs every week which can take you many hours to do. They are not necessarily hard to do but they are very time consuming. I personally found most of the lectures relatively boring as I took database in high school. The midterm was somewhat difficult but doable. I advice is to study the relational algebra because he really likes that stuff. Final was basically the midterm but with different questions and one super long question that had multiple queries. Dekhtyar is a cool teacher but this class was just a whole bunch of busy work.

I'm only writing this because I know Dekhtyar reads these on occasion and I'd like him and other to know that he is not a good professor. For this class the labs are tedious and do not facilitate learning. He is a decent lecturer but he tends to drift of topic and the material in this class is so mundane that I wager 90% of the students would get the same if not better grades by not attending the lecture. He is unorganized and does not grade on time and in our section of the class he lost a good portion of the midterms and did not realize this until the quarter was almost over (more than a month after the midterm) which forced the class to take another midterm two weeks before finals to make up for his this. I don't think (or a least I hope) English is his first language and this shows in the labs and questions he writes cause myself and many other students to loose points on labs and midterms due to ambiguous and oft unintelligible wording of his questions. This was an easy class so it really showed how incompetent Dekhtyar was at facilitating learning for even the most basic of materials. Others have told me that he slacks off in this class because it is not interesting and he performs better for more advanced classes in this series but the absolute buffoonery I saw this stumbling, stuttering, overweight, mess of a man partake in during my experience in this class was enough to make me avoid any classes taught by him. So be warned Dekhtyar could be a good teacher but his general buffoonery prevents him from being anything more than the jester of the CS department.

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...)

This class is a survey of prominent data mining algorithms and methods. There are no exams or quizzes. Grades are entirely project based. Instead of turning in source code, the primary deliverable for most labs and projects is a written report. Generally, Dekhtyar's lectures are interesting and fun to attend and he is very charismatic. Although class is fun, Dekhtyar's lectures are consistently very difficult to follow; although he does compensate for this with extremely useful pre-printed lecture notes. His lectures cater to individuals with prior experience with data mining which can be very problematic for the average computer science student. Most labs and projects require a massive time commitment (10 to 20 hours) for good results. Almost all assignments are group based. Be EXTREMELY careful in picking a lab partner. Overall I feel that I learned a lot about data mining but the time commitment was very unreasonable at times (4 assignments simultaneously). Take this class if you want to learn a lot, but not if you want to raise your GPA.

This class consisted of a series of programs and two large group projects. The labs are all about implementing different data mining algorithms. One of the projects is a design project where you have to create a system that uses data mining. The second one basically consists of finding something interesting in a data set using data mining and reporting on it. The programs could be time consuming, but they're basically just implementing pseudocode of the algorithms talked about during lecture. The second project that used data mining to determine stuff about data was interesting and relevant to the course. I felt the design project was more based on how creatively you could use data and didn't contribute as much to the course. No exams, but you do have two presentations - one on your initial idea for the design project and a final presentation on the design project.

Take this with Stanchev instead! Way too much busywork

Gross

literally worst teacher I have ever had. requires way too much work and sucks at teaching, always takes your lab time

Alex is a very thorough and intelligent professor. He knows his material well. This course however, while appearing to be very structured and organized, lacked the structure necessary to facilitate learning. Our grade was based on two group projects and there were disparate lectures on various algorithms and their applications to bioinformatics, on which no follow-up had occurred (i.e. quiz, exam, assignment). Here are my recommendations for improvements for next time: -Assign a project manager. If a project is to be successful, each team should have a manager. Probably choosing someone that has a vested interest in the project (if it's someone's thesis) or if someone expresses interest in managing the project. Or Dekhtyar could have been the project manager. Without a clear person that is accountable for the project's success, it is unlikely to have as thoughtful of a project as one would like. This was a point of frustration for me, and I can leave it to the reader to decide whether it was because I am too intolerant of the "graduate-style classroom". Suggestions for improvement: -Create some milestones throughout the quarter. Not just "what's the team organization". Actual milestones. Everyone just twiddles their thumbs until the last couple weeks where people scramble to get the project done. This is not a description of my experience only. Other groups have a shared sentiment. -I took this course because I wanted to learn more about algorithms. I understand that this is a graduate course; but is it unreasonable to expect to solve problems using the said algorithms. is it unreasonable to have a handful of assignments where these algorithms are implemented?

Avoid

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