Nico, Phillip  

NICO RULES!!!! he knows the material very well. his lectures are awesome becaue he has a decent sense of humor and always made the class laugh. He graduated from cal berkeley so he pretty much knows his stuff very well.. I would recomend him to anybody who has or has not ever taken a programing class before. He didnt even mind if we slept in class once in awhile because he knew that some of the material that he was required to teach could tend to get a little boring. He even turned down the lights for some students in the front row once when they were trying to nap. overall he's down to earth and pretty mello...

NICO was my favorite professor i have had so far. He is a very funny guy who teaches the material well. His only downfall si that he grades much to hard. I would still recommend you take him though because he is great.

Great teacher. Knew his stuff really well. Made the class extremely interesting. Taught a lot of interesting facts relating to computers that didn't necessarily have to do with what we were currently studying. Had a great sense of humour which is nice for a teacher in this subject area.

Nico is a good guy. I found class boring at times, but that could be contributed to the fact that i had it in the morning and I am definately not a morning person. Weekly programming asignments are asigned, and he always wrote up a project for us to do during each lab. He give you plenty of quizzes which definately helps you in preparing for the midterm and final which were quite reasonable. I recommend Nico

Nico can suck my ass!!! His teaching techniques are so bad....if u had no programming experience coming into the class then u will probabaly learn nothing in the class. His intellect level is so high that when tries to teach the beginners anything....he cant teach it to them! He is also a hard grader..and i hate him and would never take him again!

Nico is a great prof. for students who have at least a little experience in programming, like me. He does indeed have a strange sense of humor, but he really does want all his students to succeed. I never went to his office hours because I didn't need to, so I won't try to comment on that aspect. The lectures are informative--reading the book before going is often helpful. Quizzes and midterms must be read carefully and answered even more carefully. The final was not too bad--I felt adequately prepared. The Labs and Programs make you think, but he is always willing to answer questions. I would give him a 'B+' but that wasn't a choice on the menu. Incidentally, that's also the grade I got in the class--'B+'.

Very good professor. He is so excited about his field and really wants everyone to learn. His quizzes and tests are quite hard, so read the book and pay attention. The common final was REALLY HARD. Easy lab, although he grades quite hard on programs and labs. Overall, he's probably one of the better cpe teachers, quite easy class if you put in the effort.

Dr. Nico is an awesome teacher. Though I am doing poorly in the class, primarily because I don\'t want to read the book and second its a support course, the professor is amazingly helpful. You can see him walk around back and forth answering questions from students. To get a really good grade: 1. READ THE BOOK AND NOTES! 2. Pay attention and attend all of the lectures. Some of the people I know would complain that they are getting bad grades in the class and they can\'t even realize that they are not reading book nor attending the lectures.

Despite the difficulty of his class, I thought Nico was a great teacher and provided me with a good foundation for the subsequent CSC classes. I know other students who had easy teacher and got an A, but they didn't know jack when it came to 102 and they ended up failing. Nico's tests can be pretty tricky so watch out. And BEWARE OF THE FINAL! I had an A going into the final and I did well on the common final, but his final kicked my butt and I ended up with a B in the class.

Nico is the man. The class is pretty easy and I had no trouble at all. People will warn you to start on the programs early, but if you're pretty comfortable with the material you can start on them that afternoon they're due. Don't bother buying the book until you realize that you really need it; which most likely will never happen. If you go to his lectures like half the time you can get an A. I can reccomend him almost without reservation.

Professor Nico is a great CSC prof. He explains everything extremely well. Take him if you can. He is a computer scientist, so beware. Computer scientists have an odd sense of humor. If you are one of them you will enjoy his jokes and stories, even the test questions have jokes in them. If you are not a CSC or CPE major, I would not recommend Nico. He is very careful to be technically correct that he sometimes loses students who are not so technically savvy. He is careful to use the exact technical term and can confuse students who have no clue what he is talking about easily. The tests are on what was in lecture, so more than fair. Read the questions carefully, he is very picky on being technically correct. The common final was hard, but that is not is fault. He posts all of his assignments and grades on his website, so you don't actually have to go to lab. Start the programs early, they actually involve logic. Don't bother buying the book. I used it twice to look up code. I could have just used a friend's book. Nico answers email quickly if you ever have questions. First rate prof. I will take him every opportunity I have. If you have programming experience, take Nico. If not, there are probably better profs for beginners, Nico has a tough time with that.

Professor Nico is a really approachable guy who is just really down to earth. I've never had any experience in programming before, and by simply going to his lectures you might still be lost. Reading the book BEFORE going to his lectures is usually a good thing, because the way he explains things is not always the same as the book and sometimes his explination isn't the best way. He is very entertaining, and wants his whole class to succeed. His quizzes aren't incredibly hard (total of 4, he drops the score for the lowest of the 4) and the 2 midterms are okay too. He provides "his way" (solution) of doing each assignment and lab on his website, which is helpful if you take the time to look at them. Last but not least, he is not the greatest teacher if you've never had any experience in programming, but I don't think there are any profs better than him teaching this course. Stick with Nico and read the book.

dr. nico is a good teacher, i guess. i didn't have any programming background when taking this class so it was very difficult to catch up with everyone else who already did. he takes lightyears to get homework back to you which can be kinda frustrating since you keep getting marked off for the same mistakes cause you don't know you're making a mistake. but, all in all, compared to the rest of the computer science department, nico is the cream of the crop. i would recommend nico to anyone without a programming background.

I took Nico's 101 class my first quarter at Cal Poly and he was the person who made me enjoy Computer Science. His lectureing style is easy to understand and if you put effort into the class, you will come out with a very good foundation for CSC/CPE. While the labs are not terribly interesting, they do help solidify material from the lectures. The programming projects are challenging but very do-able, just be sure to start them when they are assigned, and not the night before they are due. He is very approachable and easy to talk to but don't expect him to directly answer questions about specific coding of projects. He will give you all the coding tools you need, but how to use them is very much in your hands. He will not tell you exactly how to solve a problem, which in retrospect is beneficial to the student. The only homework is a series of programming assignmenst which depending on how fast you can code and type, can take anywhere from half and hour to eight hours. Lab assignments are short enough that they can easily be completed in lab. Ontehr that taht, the only other work is styding for tests which are very straight forward, no tricks. Be sure you know definitions, even if you can code well, he wants you to know the basic definitions. An awsome professor who I would recommed highly to anyone

Nico was an excellent teacher for CSC101. It was challenging for someone without prior programming experience, but it wasn't impossible. If you work hard on this class, you will do well. I also liked the fact that he posted his lecture notes online, which became very helpful to use as study guides for quizzes and tests. One thing I didn't like though is that he takes forever to grade stuff and get it back, so you don't really know how you are doing on projects and labs until very near the end of the quarter. This bugged me immensely, I mean we as students have to get work done on time, why should teachers not have to? Other than that, Nico was a great teacher. I will definitely take him again given the opportunity.

First off, this guy's sense of humor is ridiculously bad. ... His midterms were hard, but curved, and his quizzes were unexpected and completely irrevelent to what he taught in class. The projects sucked, but I don't really think that was his fault, they were just shortcomings of the material. He seemed a little weird, and would digress and crack a lot of pointless jokes that left the normal, non-geeky people like myself confused.... .

Nico is a brilliant and funny professor. He\'ll mock the class when no one has questions, and he\'ll make jokes within his lectures and example code. He\'s fun to listen to, and never gets angry (he just talks really fast when he gets pissed). He conveys all material clearly and helps students with any difficulties. 101 is a very tough class, but professor Nico made it bearable for me. Take him if you get the chance, as you\'ll learn a lot and you\'ll enjoy it!

First of all, let me say that my grade is a C+, and I'm damn proud of it! Nico is NOT the guy you want for an easy cruise through 'CUSP and MIPS land,' as he is wont to refer to it. However, if you want to learn stuff, he's your man. Unfortunately, the workload is such that you might not have time to do anything else but CPE 215 for the quarter, since he assigns programs every week. If you think they're one-liners, you can think again, and the specifications can be especially cryptic. Get a technical dictionary if you can't figure the terms out, because he is more than willing to knock off that top 10% of your grade for it. One alternative is to see him in office hours, where he is very helpful. As for the lectures he gives, they're pretty boring. He always wishes everyone goodnight when the lights go off, but actually most people are asleep long before then. It's probably not his fault though, as the subject matter isn't exciting to anyone but total nerds. That said, about the first thing you'll notice about Nico is that he is just such a person. I challenge anyone to find a more nerdy guy in Poly, though he's the harmless and amusing type rather than the reclusive and weird one. He has a tendency to crack jokes that aren't funny, and likes to pause to give you time to laugh (or not). I have to commend him for trying, though. Most professors don't even do that. My only other complaint is that CUSP, the assembly code you use for about 90% of the time and work, doesn't actually exist... I suppose nothing's perfect, though, and it certainly is better than starting off with MIPS. All in all, despite his quirks and point pinching, Nico is highly recommendable for 215.

I had been scared of taking this course, due to some horror stories / evaluations of other prof's who taught it. Nico managed to make it somewhat entertaining, and definitely took much of the mystery out of scary-looking assembly. Definitely recommended.

After looking at polyratings I decided to enroll in CPE X317 oh man was that mistake! Professor Nico does teach very well and you do learn a huge amount however this guy has no idea how to judge student difficulties. When people say that you spend all your time doing things for Dr. Nico they are right. His programs take days and days to get finished and they dont prepare you whatsoever for what is on the midterm. BTW the class average for the midterm was a 62%. The people in this class are mostly juniors and seniors who know what they are doing mind you. Hopefully since this is the first time he is teaching the course he will improve but I would still wait another quarter before taking this clas. Finally the class CPEX317 itself is not an easy class by any means since(if you learned JAVA) you must first learn C, then unix environment, emacs or vi before even beginning systems programming. He is overall a real nice guy but take him in 317 only if you are taking 8 units.

Dr. Nico is a good teacher. Granted, I did have the C++ core classes, and that helps in 317, but I had very little experience with UNIX. I learned everything I needed for the class and personally thought the midterm was easy...I just didn't study for it. Both the midterm and the final are straight out of the notes he gives, you just have to study for it. I would take him again in a heartbeat. Hands down my favorite class as of yet.

Prof.Nico is a nice guy, and has a great sense of humor, but he has NO ability to understand student difficulties. If you had little programming experience, his assignments take days and nights to finish. He has a wonderful course website, but during the lecture he just goes through the lecture notes that he puts on website. I agree with the opinion of his bad teaching techniques. His grading policies are: 8 assignments 25%, quiz 10%, midterm 25%, and final 40%. He had 60 students in last quarter, and 23 students got D or lower. So I would not recommend you take his classes

I've taken two classes from Dr. Nico, worked my butt off on each, and gotten a C+ in both. This might seem bad, but I have to admit I learned a lot in both of them. As a rule, if you don't want to do anything or you have a ton of units, it might be to your detriment to take one of Dr. Nico's courses. Also, if you're thinking of taking such a class to raise your grade, there's far easier ways to do that. One thing to note- make sure you don't copy code. Any code. This guy means business, which might partly explain why it takes so long for the assignments to be graded. This is about the only complaint I had about the class, as well as one particularly tricky question on the midterm that he will hopefully leave out in the future. Dr. Nico is known to be a bit malleable on grading, and he offers good hints on the programs by way of e-mail and office hours. If you can't figure something out, don't beat your head against the wall. He won't take it as an insult even if your question is stupid (no matter what they say, there's such a thing!).

Nico is a good lecturer and a good person all together. The class itself is workload intensive, but we had 3 late days we could use over the quarter, so if your program just isn't working, or you have another project, just put the program off a day...or two and no big deal, just use one or two of your late days. Class comes down to 7 programs, about as many labs, and a few midterms. The programs can be a bit difficult until you have the feel for them, but if you go into the labs and ask questions he will help clear everything up. I recommend taking Nico, he is a great professor.

This was the first time CSC 317 has been taught, and considering that, Nico did a great job teaching it. This class is all about C programming, Unix, Makefiles, text editors like vi and emacs, and other cool stuff. If you don't like reading man pages or manuals, and think thus stuff is boring, you're probably going to do bad in the class, but this really isn't Nico's fault. His lectures are relatively interesting and pertinent, and he's willing to spend a day clarifying assignments and exams for his students. He's also very willing to help you in office hours, but he made a comment that a lot of students don't talk to him in his office hours. One thing: START THE PROGRAMMING ASSIGNEMENTS EARLY!! He doesn't give partial credit for late assignments (it's all or nothing), and they aren't programs you can code up in a night. But if you're willing to be open about learning Unix (forget everything Microsoft), and you talk to him in office hours if you're having problems, you'll do fine in the class. Overall, I'd recommend him.

Prof. Nico knows Unix and C. He is a fairly good teacher. I feel my previous knowledge was a life saver. Unix is extremely hard to pick up and use to complete these tough programming assignments. Especially when they start the third week. He made the midterm too hard, and the final too easy so if you screwed up on the midterm, doing well on the final didn't help you to much. From my experience with Nico, an A- is not too tough, but getting an A is impossible. Over all I would recomend Nico.

Nico is seriously the best teacher I have had at Poly. In fact, this has been by far the best class I have ever taken. It was fun, and I learned a TON. If you are looking for an easy A and you are not really willing to work, take another class and take another professor. Nico will work you, but he will make you want to work. He makes the work fun, and I was always excited to start programming on his assignments. His tests are brutal, but are usually from his lecture material. Also, once you take the midterm, you get the idea of what his tests are like so it is easier to prepare for the final. Nico is the most approachable professor I have ever taken. Go to his office hours, he will help you...guaranteed. Seriously, the best class...

"...and all of the sudden you are trying to kill your children, and they're not listening!" Yeah, it sounds morbid, but when Prof. Nico says it (in the correct context, of course - in this case, UNIX systems programming), it's absolutely hillarious. Such quotes are characteristic of Prof. Nico - 317 was _by far_ the most fun I've had in a class probably in my entire 13+ years of school. I can't remember the last time I actually _wanted_ to wake up for a class - not only does Prof. Nico ABSOLUTELY know his stuff, but he knows how to make it FUN and SO interesting to learn! I only have one regret about 317 - I wish I had failed so that I could take it over again! TAKE PROF. NICO, END OF STORY!

Nico gives pretty entertaining and interesting lectures. Unfortunately they do very little to prepare you for the assignments he gives. I would only recommend taking this class with Nico if you have a decent understanding of C/Unix already and have a minimum of 20 hours a week you are prepared to spend on the assignments. If you don't, you will not make it through this course without getting an ulcer. There is a LOT of information packed into this short 10 and the unnecessarily complex projects Nico assigns force you to spend mindless ours debugging and fiddling with miscellaneous C/Unix quirks that you tend not to get as strong a grasp on the main concepts as you probably would with a series of smaller more focused projects. The labs are also very useless. They are structured much more like quizzes that labs. They give you a task to complete and little info on how to do it. If you do end up taking the course be sure to start all the projects as soon as they are assigned and take time to read the chapters in the text that correspond to the class. If you don't you will die.

Nico is oustanding. He did his best to convey the material well and in a comical matter, but nothing your business students would laugh at. He was very helpful during office hours. His tests were difficult but reasonable. The programs were usually very hard and took a lot of time. On top of compeleting programs, we had a Lab exercise to complete almost every Friday. We had two tests and a final. The class was taught well, but the work load was enormous. I spent several weekends solely programming. Right when I finished one, I started the next. He tests your program very thouroughly so test it well. He fell behind grading our programs so some of our errors unfortunately propagated through to other programs. I would still recommend him but make sure you are ready to work extremely hard to do well in the class.

Nico is by far the best professor that I have seen in the CSC or CPE or EE departments. His projects may seem difficult, but you learn more from them than anyting else. Also his tests seem difficult, but if you attend lecture and do your projects you'll do well. Also his late day system is by far the best thing i've ever seen for programming projects. Everyone knows that there are those days you just can't get your program to work and wish you had a few more hours to get it to work, and he gives you that at no cost to your grade! Take him for everything.

Best professor. Knows practically everything and teaches it very well. 357 is known to be an insanely hard class. The material is fairly easy and straightforward - you spend a couple weeks refreshing C, and then dive into Unix I/O, filesystems, signals, terminal I/O, and processes. Maybe it was just me, but I really like that stuff. Exams are a little difficult, but very reasonable. The midterms were probably more difficult than the final. He gives you old exams to study off of, as well as all the class notes and everything in PDF and postscript. He also allows you to use your book, but you really don't need it. You don't really even need the book for the class. Lecture was always fun and engaging, and Nico includes just the right amount of good humor. For labs and programs, be prepared to spend 15-35 hours a week coding, debugging, reading man pages, etc.. depending on how fast you work. Some programs were hard, and several were way easier. He grades programs and labs pretty fairly. He also allows 3 uses of "late days" which extend a program (or lab...)'s deadline by 24 hours. By the end of the quarter, you'll have had "check the return value of the system call" burned into you 1000 times over. Do it, it's necessary. He curves the class appropriately at the end. I'd take him for every class I could. Best CSC professor I've ever seen so far at Cal Poly.

Nico is a great prof. Cpe 357 is a tough class. It takes a lot of work outside of the classroom, sitting at home (or the lab), figuring things out. Be prepared. However difficult it was, I found it to be a super rewarding course with Nico at the helm. He makes it clear to the class that he knows it's a lot of work, and that you have other classes too. He understands that it is a difficult course and students will need a lot of help and encouragement. He is great in office hours and really wants to help point you towards the solution. I can confidently say that he is a great prof for CPE's who haven't had much programming experience in a while and need some refreshing. Take Nico and be ready to learn and work, but he really makes the course interesting and rewarding.

I am posting this rating because I think you guys need to hear from someone who crashed and burned taking his class. That was my fault......make sure you read the book, haha. He is soooo helpful in office hours and is willing to give you a direction to head in for each program. There are on average 6 programs that he makes you do. Labs are optional, but DO them anyways. Professor Nico is a really great person and he wants you to ask questions. He\'ll mock the class for not asking questions if they don\'t. So please don\'t take any other professor unless you have a choice between Professor Clark and Professor Seng(because those dudes are awesome too).

I don't know why Nico has anything lower than a 4.0 on this website. He is, by far, one of the BEST professors Cal Poly has to offer. It's professors like him that give Cal Poly its reputation. His lectures are never boring, and because they aren't, you absorb the material easily. I learned more in one quarter from him than I have in all of my CSC/CPE courses combined. He is *extraordinarily* helpful in office hours. He never judges you for how poorly you're doing either; he helps find your problem areas and helps you correct it. I sincerely wish the department would just fire everyone in the CSC department and let him teach everything. TAKE NICO WHENEVER AND HOWEVER YOU CAN!!! You will not regret it!

Best fucking teacher.

Best teacher I've had at cal poly. This class was hard but I felt that as the quarter went on I felt that I learned a lot. Good teacher in every way, take him if you can.

Nico is the best. He is passionate. He is knowledgeable. He is a great professor! Highly recommend over any other 357 instructor. You will learn and you will struggle, but he's always really helpful and tries to answer any question you may have.

This is Dr. Nico's first quarter teaching 357 in a couple years. A lot of people don't know but he is the person who created CPE 357, so he has a lot of knowledge of the struggle in this class. Nico provides a great understanding of the material, considering he has been working a lot with UNIX based programming. He also provides a great sense of humor making the class very interactive. Assignments aren't as bad as well, as long as you do them early. He also lets you have a partner for some dense projects too. His tests aren't as bad either, but he can be pretty tricky. Overall, this guy is amazing. He made CPE 357 the struggle that all computing majors feel about the class pretty doable. You learn through the struggle of programming in C and UNIX. And Nico provides an amazing job for making the material easy to understand.

I did not pass 357 initially with Nico, but I feel like I have gained a better understanding of the course during my second run-through. His lecture notes were invaluable in some cases (had great code examples not found in K&R), though they often repeated material and were sometimes vague (under the assumption you payed close enough attention in class or read the K&R book). He also gave an entire question bank for the C-quiz and midterm (way more than you can do by the time they were released). So while these notes and practice problems were of great help, I felt the class as a whole was a lot more overwhelming than it needed to be (the notes could have been reduced substantially, a couple of the readings could have been avoided as well). I also think some essential C skills like Makefiles, GDB and valgrind were kind of left for you to learn (I wish these tools were demoed in class). Otherwise Nico's a very good teacher that knows how to convey the concepts well. If you haven't taken CSC 225, I'd recommend reading The C Programing language to get a head start (the C part of the class goes by fast!).

By far the best CSC teacher I have ever had. I learned way more in this class than in the past five or six CSC classes i've taken this past year. To be fair, i'd have to say that I would have really struggled in this class had I not been familiar with unix/linux and had a good handle on the C language, and I was fairly suprised that hardly anyone dropped the class. You will learn a great deal in this class. Nico presents the material clearly, has interesting and engaging assignments such as compression and shell programs. I have to say that the tests were a little tricky, but he was a fair grader.

Nico is an excellent instructor. His lectures are well organized, clear, interesting, and are often brightened by his good sense of humor. 357/x317 did have a few challenging things about it, but asking for help in office hours and planning ahead of time for project work helped to get good scores on the programming projects. I found his exams to be very reasonable and well written, often easier than completing the programming projects and worth more of the grade. All in all, I really enjoyed taking Nico's section of CPE-357.

Awesome prof. Take him if you get the chance.

Brilliant Professor. He\'s very helpful when you have a question. Presents the material clearly. A much better 357 professor than your other choice.

Really good professor, never a dull moment in his class. The programs are doable, but definitely start the day they are assigned or you won't get them done. Also, this is the first class the textbook actually helped. Do the reading since some of the assignments are pulled from samples in the book.

Dr. Nico is everything a professor should be. His class is tough but his lectures are so good it almost feels easy. Everything in the course is very focused and connects perfectly. The assignments and labs are interesting and reinforce all of the critical concepts, making tests a breeze. He's also quite funny and is a very nice guy in class and office hours.

Professor Nico is the best CS professor I've had at Cal Poly yet. His lectures are incredibly informational, and he explains things very very well. On top of that, he has an exceptional knowledge about any topic you're interested in. Beyond that though, he's not the MOST helpful during office hours...while it's good that he asks you questions that get you closer to the answer, for some programs it's just too hard and I wish he'd give direct answers sometimes. Midterms and final are pretty straightforward, he prepares you really well, giving loads of previous exams and a whole day to discuss questions you might have. I HIGHLY RECOMMEND YOU START PROGRAMS EARLY. This was the main reason I got a D in the class. I devoted too little time to the programs and thus lost my grade. Overall, I'd recommend Nico to anyone, and I'd gladly take him again.

Nico is an excellent professor, he will do anything to help you out. If you have any questions hit up his office hours and you'll get a thorough answer/explanation. His lectures are fairly entertaining, but his midterms and programs are super hard. This is a class that will help you learn better programming skills, but if you have take CPE X317 you will not learn too much new material.

Nico is very approachable in office hours, and will help you as long as you have directed questions to ask. Don't expect to go in with no idea and have him just explain it to you, that's what lecture is for. Other than that, the class was fun, but required a decent amount of work. Some of the programs were not covered as extensively as they should have been in class, but if you took 317 and are familiar with C, you should be able to get through them without too much trouble. If you're good at C programming and into Unix/Linux (you'll have to put up with his constant Windows bashing) then I'd recommend prof Nico..

I had Nico two quarters in a row, for x317 (C and UNIX) and for 453 (intro OS's). He's a pretty funny guy in an odd sort of way, and very approachable. It's hard to get an A from him, but you can get a solid B with reasonable effort. Sometimes it does seem the projects can take over your life, but that only happens when you put them off for too long (like me!). x317 has a lot of material crammed into it, whereas 453 is more about principles of OS's and some of their applications. You learn a lot in both classes. Nico is always well-prepared and actually grades very fairly. Midterms are curved and generally given pretty decent partial credit, especially on the programming problems, which do NOT comprise more than a half of the points (usually not even 1/3), so really if you have the concepts down but aren't good at programming on-the-fly, you can get decent grades. Finals, although designed to take 2 hours, are given the full 3 hours and most students find that they need it. Well I guess I've blabbed enough. Bottom line: Take Nico if you want to learn a lot and don't mind working for it.

He is a good lecturer and is about as humurous as a CSC prof could be. Coding assignments were difficult and take much time to complete. Office hours were a must in order to complete the assignments. Even though his exams were open book, they were pretty difficult. It is very hard to get an A so be prepared to get a B with a lot of work.

Nico is the man. He knows everything about programming and when you get through one of his classes, you learn more than you ever thought. One of the programs is to extract data from a minix filesystem image (yes just one) and I think I learned more on this one project than I did from any other previous class. Expect to work hard, but get rewarded at the end.

Welllll, what can I say about Dr. Nico? The guy is a phenomenal teacher. He's here because he wants to be here, and it shows. He does whatever it takes to help a student, but at the same time challenges them with a heavy workload, the mark of a quality teacher. He pushes you, but helps out along the way. His midterms and final are fairly hard, programs are of reasonable difficulty for a 400 level class, but he has some nice stuff with his grading to try and inflate everyone. Nico is well worth the challenge, and you'll be a better programmer for it.

Undoubtedly the best computer science professor I have ever had.

Nico is a great professor. Take him if you want to learn but don't expect a high grade. His exams are really hard and the questions are not very straight forward at all. If I could do it again, I would still take him though....RIP my GPA

Nico is a great teacher! He's one of the only professors at Cal Poly that knows the material very well AND knows how to teach. It's a rare combination. He is THE operating systems professor to take at poly, so I would definitely recommend taking him if you can. There are 5 programs (technically 6, but the 6th program is literally writing printf("Hello world");). These programs can range in difficulty from taking 12 hours a day for the entire weekend, to knocking it out during a few lab periods. There are also about 6 labs which are mostly written homework questions from the textbook. Overall the workload is significant, but no more than a typical upper division cs/cpe class. Definitely go to his office hours with any problems you have because he is great at giving help and making sure you're on the right track for your programs. He also has two midterms which he gives you questions that will be on it, so as long as you know those questions you'll do fine. His final is another matter. His final was by far the best written final I've taken here, and also the most difficult. He really managed to get at your understanding of the material in his final instead of just memorization, so watch out. The key is to do well on everything else so you have lots of room to bomb the final. Still, great professor!

NICO SUCKS!!!

Prof. Nico is an entertaining lecturer with plenty of jokes. He seems like a cool guy to have as a friend.... NOT as a professor. His exams will make you reconsider his friendly nature. If your answer does not match his personal exam key exactly then you will lose major points. There is no partial credit really. Some of the exam questions could be read several ways and he doesn't care that you (rightfully) misunderstood the question. Example: Coding problem worth 15 out of total exam 60. I got a 1/15 when all my code was correct except I initialized a lock variable to a 1 instead of 0. I do not recommend Nico unless you have no other options.

Nico is perhaps the hardest professor I have taken yet, however he is also one of my favorite. It is scary how knowledgable and smart this guy is. Not only can he lecture eloquently, but he can field any question you can throw at him. The work load is absurd in my opinion, but if you start the day its assigned you can usually finish. He also gives three late days throughout the quarter in case you can't finish. Great teacher, and great guy. Funny too!

Good teacher, he knows his stuff and teaches it pretty well. Has no lab period, so that is good and bad. Programs are very hard, and if you don't know Minix or whatever the program is about, you will have to work VERY hard to figure it out. You need to spend alot of time with this class and tests are OK you get open book. The book isn't terribly helpful tho.

Overall a good professor, very difficult tests and pretty difficult programing assignments. He curves the tests but that is it and dont expect a huge curve. On the final the average was 54% uncurved and he curved it to 64%. Midterm was about the same so they kinda hurt. Programs where difficult and there where a few that the most of the class did not finish. Class structure 5 programing assignments, worth 5% each, 5 HW assignments worth 3% each, midterm worth 25% and final worth 35%. He does give you 3 "late days" to use at your discretion throughout the quarter. Overall good lecturer, explains material very well, but do not expect a high grade as they are few and far between due to the difficulty of the exams.

He moves fast. The labs and assignments can be a REAL pain, but the readings and lectures are what you actually want to focus on. Nico's huge on conceptual questions in exams, the kind you can't just cram for. He's helpful in office hours and is very sympathetic to the college struggle, so definitely get as much help and feedback from him as possible.

This may be his first time teaching networks but I think he did a really good job. His lectures are awesome especially for a class as important as networks. For the first 6 weeks of this course we only had 1 program which was pretty easy to do so I thought that the class wasn't going to be too bad. But then the gates of hell opened and out came program 2- the chat program and following that came a file transfer program which was implementing 2 separate protocols. The chat program was definitely the most work and had the most lines of code that I had ever written so my suggestion is start the first day you get the assignment and ask a lot of questions. Nico is very helpful and understanding in office and he really wants you to understand the material. I would definitely take Nico for any class I could. Though this class was a lot of work towards the end I definitely enjoyed it and learned a lot about networks.

Like the evaluation below me, this is Nico's first time teaching Networks. And it is true that the first 6 weeks was only 1 program, and that the chat program was big. But this is his first time teaching it, and he knows how to adjust the timing and the size of it for future classes. He does teach Operating Systems and in the past taught Computer Security, so he knows what he's doing. Nico is a smart guy. If you haven't had a class with him yet, then you don't know his personality! He's a jolly person and he gives off an aura that lets you know that he's smart. If you have taken him before, you know what I mean, and everyone would like to have him again. The textbook is very useful, you can read it and it breaks down the protocols well. Lab is a blast, I remember my first impression of it, it's a super neat place with ethernet wires running everywhere. He has this grading policy that the points you missed in your midterm can be made up. It is made up by the percentage you score on your final. So if you score 50% on your final, then 50% of your midterm's lost points are also recovered. Too bad he will be in sabbatical until 2015, so by then if you see him offering classes, take him!

Not only is Nico the nicest guy ever, he's amazing at conveying material and is really understanding. TAKE HIM!

Trump 2016 -> Kanye 2020 -> Vermen Supreme 2024 -> ??? -> Profit