Whipple, Walter  

This professor does not know what he is doing. He just rambles about irrelevant topics during class like "Hungarian notation." He uses Aaron Keen's lab material for the lab section, but makes up his own lectures and midterms. Without the Keen's lectures, the lab material is extremely confusing, as he cannot teach the material properly. This guy definitely should not be teaching. The first day of class he said that he needs to study in order to keep up with us. A professor should have some knowledge about what he's teaching. Plus, when he does lecture, he uses jargon that people, who are new to programming, do not know. Avoid this teacher at all costs. Even if it's scheduled on your flowchart, if can't get another professor, take it another quarter. You'll be glad you did.

Worst professor/teacher I have ever had in my life. His lectures are extremely confusing and for the majority of the time they are irrelevant to the lab that follows the lecture. Please for your own good, do not take his class and avoid him at all costs.

As all of the other comments state, Whipple is not fit for teaching. If you end up with no choice but to take whipple, just work very hard and study all of the information in the book. As long as you put in the extra effort and reach out to him during the few office hours he has and in labs he can be of some assistance. Also make sure you are on top of due dates. He gave many extensions, but do not assume he will. So far Whipple is the worst teacher I have ever had in all my years of schooling.

Even though I received an A in the class, I would recommend that you stay away from this professor. His lectures are boring and often make no sense and he makes far too many mistakes. Doesn't matter though because I think he was fired.

Great teacher, learned a lot not covered in the book from his lectures

No.

I think Dr. Whipple is a decent professor. On a scale of 1 to 10, 1 being the lowest, I would give him a 6.5. Like the other reviewers before me, I also signed up for Kari Haworth, who had to leave and had Whipple slowly take over. CPE 103 is course taught in Java, a language that Whipple is not familiar with, which made a transition a bit difficult. However, here's why I still kinda like the guy: he tries to learn the material beforehand(and does quite a good job, I'd say), is patient, nice, and his lectures did get better. Also, he let my class choose from 3 dates (with 2 to three day gaps in between them) when we wanted to take the midterm, which was awesome(of course we choose to take the test a week later than what was scheduled, which was the latest date he let us choose from). If you happen to have him, don't worry, it's not the hopeless like what these other reviewers seemed to be implying. Ask questions, ask them multiple times if needed. You'll be ok :)

The worst professor at cal poly by a long shot. I have dealt with Mammen for 2 quarters and this pales in comparison. He does not even know java. His explanations left everyone confused. He Didn't follow the syllabus should have followed Haworth's grading scheme. Lied to my whole class about what kinds of questions would be on final. Made it a 21 page long final with 90 percent coding questions when he said initially 20 to 30 percent.

I had an A up until Haworth left and Whipple took over. Whipple was by far the worst teacher I have ever had. He was ignorant, incompetent, and arrogant. On the final I got 194/350, the highest grade in the class, turning out to be 168% on the test (he curved to the next highest grade below mine, which was ~112/350. DESPITE getting 168% on the final, which boosted my grade to around 94%, I INEXPLICABLY ended the class receiving a B (even though the final was the last thing that could affect anyone's grade). He refused to talk to me/respond to my emails about this. This and the outstanding fact that he is incapable of correctly teaching material resolves to why he has been to date the worst professor I have ever had (He often taught material that wasn't correct, leaving me to struggle with incorrect notes that I referenced for projects). Stay, stay far away and maybe submit some complaints while you're at it.

This professor should not be teaching. Not only does he fail at understanding the material of the course, he lacks the mental capacity to present any complex information. I would have had less issue with him reading a textbook to us, word for word, than to even attempt teaching. He avoids answering questions, whether he is trying to mask his incompetence or lacks the cognitive ability to keep ideas in his head, I do not know. Needless to say, don't take any class with this joke.

Wow. Honestly the worst teacher I have ever had by far. He ended up losing about half of the assignments for our entire lab section and demanded we resubmit them the friday of dead week which is obviously not in accord with final grade submissions... Avoid this man like the plague he is incompetent and apathetic.

I'm writing this early (I'm still in the class) because I want to warn anyone about to register, STAY AWAY. When I registered for this class it had a different teacher assigned to it and after it changed I could find little info about Dr. Whipple to prepare myself. What I've discovered taking this class is that not only can Dr. Whipple not teach, he's useless for questions as well. At first I thought it was just me, but as our class is being co-taught for the first half of the quarter by Dr. Haworth, I've seen her explain and teach thing clearly and concise that Dr. Whipple is unable to convey. To top it off Dr. Whipple is disconnected from the current CS industry (surprising given his background) has said, and i quote, "To me, UNIX is a 4 letter work" Note: I'm not implying he's a terrible person, he actually is quite nice, he's just incompetent. tl;dr Dr. Whipple is terrible at his job, stay away

Still in the class, so no grade yet, but seriously avoid this guy like the plague. Like the earlier reviewer, I signed up for the class when Kari Haworth was the instructor. She started off teaching the course, then it transitioned to her and Whipple co-teaching, and now only Whipple is teaching the course. Whipple cannot teach. He literally cannot even trace a single data path in a coherent manner. He also doesn't seem to review the slides before showing up to class either, so he will spend several minutes confusedly muddling through a problem on the board. He then gets frustrated with how the class seems to not be following along and starts making snide comments to the class. Unix is a "four-letter word" to him, he prefers to work on Windows, most of his stories involve developing on Fortran, and didn't even figure out that he had a unix account until week 7. He also tried to change our quizzes (which have been open book/note all quarter as per the syllabus) to closed book/note.... 5 minutes into the quiz, after he'd already passed them out. Whipple is incompetent. Avoid him.

When a professor reads from the powerpoint and does example problems from the powerpoint, you would assume that he would follow the powerpoint's solutions. When the professor continuously gets it wrong, how are we, as students, supposed to understand? If he worked on problems before class and was able to understand it, then maybe, just maybe he'd be a better instructor. Transitioning from Haworth teaching everything in lecture and lab into Whipple causes a huge disconnect. On the 3rd lab of 4 labs, he was only instructor available to help explain the lab, but he would look over it, and admit that he doesn't understand and he wouldn't pretend to understand. I have to give him credit for not pretending, but he loses credibility with me when he has to instruct a class without understanding the class. At least learn the topic before the class starts. AVOID HIM AS MUCH AS POSSIBLE if you want to understand the class.

Professor Whipple started teaching CPE315 around week 6, and the quiz average dropping over 75% literally overnight should tell you enough. Whipple cannot teach. Whipple struggles with in-lecture examples. Whipple comes to class unprepared and struggles through the lecture. Avoid Whipple at all costs...You will gain absolutely nothing.

How was this idiot even hired? How can someone who doesn't know C or Java, and who basically hates on Unix be hired to work at a university or even be taken seriously? The fact that the department replaced Haworth with this guy is disgusting. If you know what's good for you, don't take this class simply on principle so that the people in the department realize that students are avoiding this moron like the plague because he's absolutely worthless. Waste of your time, waste of your money, and a disgrace to Cal Poly.

Absolutely the worst professor I've ever has the misfortune of taking. He stepped into 315 about halfway through the quarter and almost immediately conveyed that he had no idea what he was talking about. On top of that, if he asked for people to chime in on class examples, those brave enough to try to answer were usually chastised for being wrong and not seeing the "obvious" answer. Completely useless for most of the topics in the class, completely unhelpful in showing how to do something correctly in the topics he knows anything about. Please avoid at all costs if you can help it, you'll save yourself a quarter of pain and agony.

This guy is the worst prof I've ever had. I absorbed around 5% of his lectures. Totally unable to teach. The Meta-Class was pretty interesting. I've never had a class where so many people were actually upset by the prof. We had to do his evals the other day, took around 30 minutes cause people were writing essays. It makes me sad that the hiring process at Cal Poly allows profs like this to receive my tuition.

Worst professor I've had in my 4 years of undergrad and 1 year of grad. If you are taking his class, better be ready to learn by yourself from the book, because going to his lectures are a waste of time and you will get absolutely nothing from it. He was also very useless in helping students in the labs. He just sat at his desk working on his computer. Recommend that if you want to learn something skip the quarter that he is teaching!

This guy is a clear genius, he has worked for some of the top companies in the nation, Lockheed, Boeing, etc., but when it comes to teaching, I don't know where to begin. He has these notes that he reads off in a very low monotonous boring voice, despite reading from a paper he still manages to make mistakes, the best part is when some one points out a mistake, he'll say something like aaaah someone is paying attention, it is quite funny. I can only think of one professor who is worse than Walter, the legendary Joe Grimes. At all costs avoid this guy, take 315 with Seng or Lupo. On the other hand if you are the kind of student who learns by yourself and asks questions when you get stuck, you'll be good in the class because like I said before he knows his stuff, he is just incapable of teaching. I hope he retires soon and saves us a good amount of head ache.

Do not enroll in any class taught by Whipple. If you have no other choice, cheat your way through and never look back.

After taking Whipple for 103 and 315 I have to admit that I love going to his class. This man easily makes up to 10 mistakes on the board every 50 minute lecture. That's a mistake every 5 minutes, hilarious. If you enjoy teachers being wrong all the and students having to correct them, then this is the professor for you. That being said, everyone fails quizzes/tests together then he curves so every makes it out with a B.

Take this guy for your class, and you will be tormented all quarter long. He can not convey material. People from other sections felt bad for everyone in our section. Take an extra quarter of school if you have to to avoid this guy.