Smith, Hugh  

Prof. Smith is the real deal. I already had quite a bit of coding experience and some arduino experience in high school, but there were still things I learned and I did extremely well in his class. He is more formal than other professors that I've had, but he absolutely knows his stuff, he had excellent TA's that were helpful if I ever had a bug that I couldn't solve on my own. Since this is an intro class, it is really crucial for those who do not know how to code to get a good base level of knowledge, and the way he explained everything was done well so every student left the class with the tools they need for success later. If you have a choice for your CPE/CSC 123 prof, absolutely choose Prof. Smith

Pretty good teacher. However THE CLASS IS VERY HARD!!!! Ive had a lot of cs experience before and still got a B. Didnt expect that for 123. Great guy and decent teacher though

Hugh is by far one of the better professors at Poly (but most CSC professors rock, so... ;) he has a great sense of humor and is a cool person just to talk to. If you love the material, you will really enjoy taking the class from him. This past quarter was the first time he taught CPE X317 (Systems Programming, aka "C and Unix"). I didn't have any C experience before this class and I feel very competent in it now. :) Hugh followed Nico's assignments/programs very closely... we did all the same ones. You will learn a lot! His office hours are very helpful: go to them! We ended up having 1 midterm and 1 final, then a few "feedback quizes", and of course the programs. It's very helpful to have linux installed on your home machine, so find out when the next Free Your Machine is at cplug.org and go to it if you need help. You'll be thankful you have linux on your box when you start this class. Just be sure to test your programs on hornet before you handin them. ;) AWESOME PROFESSOR!!!

Professor Smith is super funny and his lectures totally make sense, however, be prepared to program 24-7 in this class. I've never spent so much time working for one class and I still failed it. Don't procrastinate; it will kill you. He is really tough on "cheating" and his programs are ridiculously hard, but you will learn a lot in this class.

First of all, be prepared to spend all quarter programming. He will keep you constantly busy, but that is just the way this class is. He grades programs binary. If it works, you will get a 100, if not you get a 0, even after 30 hours of work. He may be good for networks, but he sucks for 317. He just doesn't care. He is very lazy and arrogant. He copied the assignments from Haungs and changed the name to his. The assignments make no sense. If you ask him how to do it, he will either be clueless on what the assignment even is or just brag about how awesome his program is and not help you. I strongly dislike Hugh Smith. He lacks the professionalism I have come to expect from Cal Poly professors.

Good lecturer, all around good guy and easy to get along with. Dont even think about cheating or youre screwd. He'll give you as much help as you ask for and i think he rewards you for participating in lab and office hours. If he is teaching for systems or networks take him over anybody else.

I took Hugh 2 quarters ago so this stuff ain't quite fresh in my mind. The course itself is great cuz as a CSC, it's my first exposure to C after a whole lotta Java. As far as Smith is concerned, he's a great professor, but he will give you a crapload of work and an impossible deadline. But usually, if it's an unreasonable deadline, you can ask to have it extended by A LOT. Expect to be very proficient in C and know the UNIX OS like the back of your hand on your way out of this class, but it will cost you some serious time coding.

This guy is a great teacher, he can present the material perfectly and is able to keep the class alert and interested. As a teacher, and a guy he's great. However, his grading style is terrible. I learned a lot from this class and firmly believe I deserved a B, but he has this binary grading system. If your program for whatever reason doesn't work correctly he'll give you a 0, or if it's a tiny reason he'll still take around 30% off. He gives a chance for regrades on programs that you got a 0 for, but even then the max is a 70, and he'll still find something to take additional points off. So if your program had an error because you forgot one small error check somewhere, but everything else works (the important stuff) you'll at most get a 70. Good teacher with a terrible grading system.

Awesome professor!! Lecture was a little boring, but was very helpful. The programs were fairly challenging, and required much time. He doesn't grade the code which is a definite bonus, because it allows you to hack and hack until you get the programs to work. If you though debugging one program was hard, just wait until you have to debug 2 at the same time. Start the programs early!!!! The lab was extremely simple. Most labs should have only taken about 1.5 hours, but it depends on who is in your group. Some people just don't have a clue. There was one midterm and a final. The tests were straightforward. Just study the notes and homework assignments.

Dr. Smith is a smart guy, but he does not like his students. He will not help in office hours, and is basically just teaching for the money. I would not recommend him for any class. Although this class is fun and the labs are cool, do not take smith, unless you plan on not asking for help. His programs are fairly tough, and passing 3 out of 4 test cases on the final program (worth about 10-15%) of your grade will only get you 10/100, so unless you get it completely I wouldnt even bother. Good luck.

smith is one hard ass. programs are binary styled graded...either it works or not...doesn't matter if you go in and talk to him about your program and try to get help and have been working on it for 2 weeks. he likes to lecture at the speed of light...he'll only stop if u ask him questions so ask him questions...otherwise he'll try to get thru as many slides as he can thru one lecture...avoid this SOB, he's stuck up and think he's the shit.

Smith is a good guy. He knows his stuff and keeps it interesting with a good sense of humor during lectures (unusal for a CSC professor!). The programs were pretty difficult, but only worth 30% of your entire grade so even though I didn't get credit for one of them, it didn't hurt my grade too badly. What did hurt my grade was spending too much time on the programs and not enough time studying for the exams. Since the exams cover very little of the coding portion of the class, it doesn't really help your grade much to do well on the programs. Hour for hour, you are much better off studying the lecture material. Oh, and be sure to develope a good debugging strategy EARLY. I think that is one of the main differences between network programming and plain old systems programming... wish I'd learned that sooner. Anyhow, I know Smith is the best you can get when it comes to networking - take him if at all possible.

First of all, this is by far the most demanding course I have taken at Cal Poly. Second of all, take Smith. Do not waste your time and money with Grimes. You learn the theory of networks in lecture, then actually build networks in lab, then write networking software in what was your free time out of class. Programming for this class will take over all of your free time, along with that time you used to spend on the internet, watching TV, or playing video games. And forget about actually spending time with your friends. Programming will be your life this quarter. The lab is awesome. It

Smith is pretty awesome. Networks is a good class, and I highly recommend taking it, though if you are CPE, you are required to do so, so this line was completely irrelevant, why am I still talking? Anyways, this class is pretty brutal as far as programming goes. The programs take up a significant portion of your life, so start well in advance. Even if you start early, you will probably still end up turning them in late. My saving grace was my ability to totally own the shit out of every midterm and the final. I'm talking high 90s here baby. Yeah, be jealous. Anyways, the secret to success is start studying at least 4 days in advance. Midterms were almost always on Tuesday, so start studying Friday night, and put in at least 3 to 4 hours Friday, Saturday, and Sunday night, then Monday night is just cleanup. Or just go balls out. Whatever. I know what you are thinking "OMG, STUDY FRIDAY NIGHT? YEAH RIGHT! THAT WILL RUIN MY SOCIAL LIFE, N00B." My response to that, is "Shut the fuck up. You are CPE/CSC and you don't have any social life to speak of. So do what I tell you so you won't turn out to be an assclown CPE like Justin LeBlanc and devalue our fucking major." Anyways, take this class, but only when you have the time and are willing to put the work in. If you do so you will be rewarded, with a good grade, and maybe a pizza party. Yum.

What is wrong with all these comments about Hugh? Why do pretty much all the comments sounds like suck-ups? And what about the guys that thinks "Smith is a good guy. He knows his stuff... ". What makes you think he knows his stuff? As a student that took this class, you technically don't have much knowledge about networks (otherwise you would have not taken this class and challenged it). So don't even mention "he knows his stuff". He likes to make it seem like he knows his stuff by making smartass comments and making his assignments and grading tougher than it should be. If you think he is soo good at networks, then ask yourself the following questions? 1. Why is he teaching and not in the booming Tech Industry? (Because he loves to teach? don't fool yourself. He hates to deal to students) 2. Does he have any networking certificates like CCNA, CCNP..? If so, why is it not on his resume? 3. Have you read his seven page resume? It is quite sad that the only thing he likes to mention over and over again is how he managed to secure money for "projects". His grading? Well, it sucks. I think he should go see a shrink for his earlier life psychological issues. He likes to take points off from your test questions. For example, he will write down minus 5 for not giving you five points for that question. He is looking to take off points, and not looking to see if he could give you points for your answer. He likes to make others suffer, because he is a sad sad man that did not succeed like his fellow students did. Poor, sad, sad, Hugh Smith! I also feel sorry for those of you here that have commented and made him look like a networking Guru. The fact is that he is not even close to have a solid knowledge of real world networking. You will know this when you go into the real world and really get into real networks! Chao!

First of all, the guy is not a prick, and not necessarily lazy. I have no problems with his behavior, and he was quite entertaining in class. That said, he is very disorganized. He also teaches the class from a very theoretical point, which means that if you were hoping to be able to build stuff after this class (I am doing a networked senior project), the class won't help. The programs are extremely tedious and long, but not particularly difficult. My biggest trouble with the class was that, due to work, I was forced to miss class and be late for a project, and that killed me in the midterm. The midterms themselves are quite difficult, he likes to trick you, and put that question that was almost a sidenote in lecture. He also will give you a lot of reading from the book which he will never cover in class. I think he has trouble selecting the material, and as a consequence, tries to touch on everything, with important subjects receiving the same treatment as less important ones. Finally, as a good csc theorist, he favors algorithms above anything else, pay attention to those in lecture, and research them online. It was my first time with networks, so I cannot compare, but his explanation of PID control in TCP flow was the poorest I have encountered.

This class was a great balance of theory, reality and implementation. It was also incredibly difficult. If you want to take this class from Smith, plan on devoting a huge chunk of time to it. The labs are excellent. The programs are huge and were usually 1000 to 1500 lines of code and very hard to debug, but not impossible. The lecture was interesting and Smith is pretty funny. The midterm and final are hard, but he gives you plenty of material to study in order to get an A, and he often takes questions directly from the review sheet. Overall, I'm very happy I took this class from Smith.

Smith is a great professor. He covers a lot of information in a short amount of time, but gives you all the notes. Go to every lecture and start the projects early and you will be fine.

This class was overall a fantastic class with Smith! The material is new to most people in the class, so be prepared to put in an extra few hours a week studying. The programs aren\'t that difficult, just time consuming and tedious. His grading is fair on exams, homework and programs. People complain about his program grading, but the fact of the matter is that you\'re in an upper division class and possibly about to graduate....you don\'t get partial credit in the real world, you\'re programs work or they don\'t. Smith is nice enough to give some partial credit and some extra credit. The extra credit is fairly easy to implement if you have the time to do so. Smith is a great teacher and very helpful in office hours, I\'d highly recommend you take him for this class.

Smith is a really engaging professor. He obviously knows a lot about networks and can answer a lot of the off topic questions you throw at him. This class covers a lot of material, and it is possible to get lost. Definitely start the programs earlier rather than later and be prepared to spend time on them. One warning: for his second and third programs, if yours does not have all of the functionality, you will get a 0 on the program. That said, he allows for program regrades, so you do have the opportunity to fix your program.

Professor Smith, as a human being, is a fantastic guy. His lectures are always entertaining, and he's always hilarious and fun in class. With that being said though, he does go very, very fast in lecture. He even gives a warning to all his students that he talks fast, but he also tells his students to stop him and slow him down, and ask questions. He's on the whole, very, very fair. His programs are difficult, but not impossible. Overall, take Smith if you can :)

He's a nice guy, but the class is pretty brutal. Some assignments gave me 357 flashbacks. If you're going in with little/no networks knowledge, please PLEASE meet with him during office hours and review sessions. The lectures move at breakneck speeds, and he sometimes assumes you already know stuff about networks. But when you talk to him outside of class, the veil of perception lifts and suddenly the truths of universe become clear and apparent. It's amazing how clear and helpful he is when he gets the chance to slow down.

Great teacher. He goes through extensive examples and presents many edge cases and discusses with the class to reach why certain designs give optimal performance. His lectures are NEVER boring considering he talks at a blistering pace (just make sure to go to class with a basic understanding of the vocab for the topics he discusses in lecture, or else keeping up may be challenging). He is constantly making jokes and interacting with the students in a friendly, captivating way. His labs are great and informative and the TAs are always quick to help. Overall, one of the most enjoyable classes I got to take at Poly.

Hugh is an excellent professor. He is pretty young for a professor, which is a plus. His lectures are really clear and he gives handouts which largely replace the need for the book. His programming assignments are extremely deceptive -- it takes more effort than you think to get two computers to just send a packet back and forth, so start early on them. Lab is spectacular, but what can you expect when you've got $750,000 worth of equipment in it? He's extremely fair and great in office hours. Take him for networks if you get the chance!

When you take 464 with Hugh, you are expected to have significant knowledge in C. But I never really did heavy C coding before like I had to do in Hugh's class. I read books and did well on his programming assignments. I just wish that I spent more time with pencil and paper before started coding the last programming assignment. The lectures and exams matched very well. His exam review sheets helped a lot also. Some absent minded person wrote about Hugh not being helpful during office hours. That comment was over-gernarlized! From my experience, Hugh was helpful as long as you can ask the right question. He will not help you debug the programs for sure, especially on programs 3 and 4 where things can get into sticky situations. If you take him, you will learn what socket programming really is. Just be prepared to spend time with his programming assignments because you will implement half of what you learn in lecture.

He presents the material well but very fast, so ask questions to slow him down. Throughout the quarter we had several "quiz's", that provided feed back on the course and his teaching abilities. He is constantly trying to improve. There are 3 major programming assignments throughout the quarter in C or C++ so take CSC x317 first if you don't know C. The course itself is fun and interesting.

Professor Smith is a cool guy but his teaching skills could be better. He tends to go very fast in lecture and if you are coming into this class not knowing much about networks, prepare to be lost. I feel like he did not treat the class as an "intro" because he tends to assume you know what he is talking about. The programs for this class are where I lost most of my points. I tended to be lost in the programs and wasn't sure what to do in most of them. He does help you a lot by giving you hints and tips but socket programming is no joke. The midterm for this class is easy, as long as you do all of the review he gives you, he literally pulls questions from this review document he gives you so do all the problems and you will do fine. The final on the other hand is a little different as he doesn't give you much of a review like he did for the midterm, just be prepared for some hard lab questions. Labs for this class were cool but some were super long and sometimes i would be completely lost since the instructions weren't the best. Overall, Dr. Smith is a cool guy but he could be a better teacher in some areas.

Great teacher. Lectures were very knowledgeable and informative and no section felt like a waste of time. Labs were also great too. Good personality, and good teaching style, he will discuss the programs in lecture so the programs aren't confusing. My only gripe of this class was he was very very nice... A bit too nice in my opinion. The questions on Midterm and Final were 90% straight from the study guide (which means easy A if you just do the study guide) and the he offered 50% extra credit (yes 50%...) if you turned in your programs early, which was not difficult at all because he explains them very well in lecture, gives you plenty of time to finish and turn in early, and I'm assuming his office hours are great too (never went). Plus I think the class was curved too. Programs took about 2-3 days to complete if you paced yourself. Great programs too, I wish he included one or two more, would've made this class much better than it already was. Take him and take this class.

Smith is a great teacher. The only bad thing I can say about him is that his penmenship is horrible. Otherwise, he's excellent. I had him for CPE 464 and 465 and feel like I learned a lot. He did get a little ridiculous with the workload in CPE 465, but he let up towards the end of the quarter, since he recognized how much we were suffering. In fact, he cancelled the final. He's a very easy teacher to talk to, has a good sense of humor, and really seems like he cares about the students.

If you are into rigorous professors like Staley, you will love Professor Smith's choice of programming assignments that keep you working all night long. That being said the lecture material can be dry at times but taking two quarters of networking with Smith exposed me to a wide variety of networking protocols, technologies, algorithms, and concepts.

Excellent course. Hugh is an excellent teacher and is as eager to learn as the best student. You get out of this course whatever you are willing to put in. Don't take it if you aren't interested in computer networks. The course consists of a midterm, 2-3 programming assignments, and a project. The workload isn't bad and the assignments are fun. The midterm is fairly easy, as you get to use a notecard. He'll threaten a final the whole quarter, but has yet to follow through with that threat. Just make sure your project is interesting or else he'll get board and may give a final to spice up his life. All in all a great class with an excellent teacher.

I had planned on taking 465 with Smith but the class got dropped because not enough people enrolled, and he sent everyone an email who had signed up for 465 that we could instead take the grad-level advanced networks class and get tech elective credit for it. He mentioned that the workload would be considerably less, and while that may be true, this was definitely a demanding class. Be prepared to spend a lot of time doing research, reading papers, and working on your group and individual projects. You have a group project (in pairs) which is actually just preparing a 1.5 hour presentation in which you'll speak about 40 minutes each. No paper required though so once the presentation is over you are done with that. The individual project can be an implementation project or a survey paper in which you do extensive research in a particular networking area. He also allowed the undergrad students to do a discovery project in which you had to do basic research and experiments with some networking area. This project requires a 10-15 page paper depending on which you choose (15 for survey, 10 for implementation or discovery). You also have to do a 20 minute presentation on your project. No matter which type of project ou'll do plenty of work and hopefully you'll learn a lot. I learned a lot in this class. Dr. smith mentions that you get out of this class what you put into it, which is definitely true. If you are very interested in networks, definitely take this class, otherwise don't bother. This class didn't have a lot of typical lecture material. It was more of a discussion class. But from when Dr. Smith did lecture, he conveyed the material well and was fairly easy to understand. I was very surprised to get an A in this class as I was not the model student. However, I put in a lot of time on my project and turned in a decent paper which is what counts the most (I think). Or perhaps he gives everyone an A or B as long as you just do the work.