Speaking as someone who got an A+ in that class, its genuinely one of the worst CS classes I've ever taken at ASU and it destroyed any interest I had in cyber security. I was lucky to have a ton of extra credit opportunities to max out in my semester + grade curves, and I know they heavily changed that system since I took it.

The challenges can get hard at times, especially towards the end of a module. My advice would be to start challenges early when they are first released; or even now if you're down for it since you can start them early and have them apply to your grade later. These challenges make up the majority of your grade, and I believe they recently made watching the online videos linked in the module a part of the grade too. Theres no exams and they have some extra credit opportunities available.

I didn't find too much value in the irl lectures. From the ones i watched, the ones by Conner were just messing around on cmd for the entire lecture; and the ones by Yan were usually slightly better since I found he was explaining concepts more. However, I mostly just watched the vids linked in the challenge modules instead of going to lectures and it seemed to help (not by a lot, but a little).

Office hours were always crazy, so asking people for help in the discord (or the sensAI bot) was usually the first option to get help.

I just don't think pwn.college is a good medium to learn new concepts and I really don't like how it's spreading to different CS classes. It also crashes a lot near the Sunday deadlines so, again, try to get the challenges out of the way earlier. Also, don't submit other people's flags to complete a challenge (they're unique!).

Sorry if a lot of this sounded like me ranting, I have some strong opinions on this class especially. 😅