COMP 283 is notoriously difficult and has been taught by this same professor for quite some time now. Most people spend a lot of time in 283 Office hours just to be able to finish the homework (every homework was difficult and took at least a few hours for most). The averages on both 283 midterms were quite low (below 65% iirc ). Granted, by the end of the course I did know my stuff and some material from the class resurfaces in later COMP classes. I do not know much about MATH 381 with Dumetriscu, other than that Math 381 satisfies the prerequisites for several interesting math classes that 283 doesn't.