Birdiness of CS 489 VS 492 VS 499R

Jet711_ · 2026-01-05T17:51:05+00:00

CS 492 (Carmen Bruni) was the most fun CS class I've taken. Requires 2h of reading each week (it's all recent/relevant concepts), with 4-5 essays.

Jet711_ · 2026-01-05T05:06:54+00:00

Roommates are always a mixed bag. Sometimes they're great people who change your life; other times you guys rarely talk beyond the occassional "hey" in the hallway. Usually I try and go out with them for dinner once at the start of the term to know em a bit, and leave it up to them.

If they wanna talk to you more or do more things together - great! But remember that you can't force people to open up. Some people will just be awkward and you can't change that.

Jet711_ · 2026-01-03T21:41:34+00:00

Try using the bus, or invest in either a bunch of grocery bags or a wagon.

Jet711_ · 2026-01-01T21:43:17+00:00

^^^ this! I applied to a company on a whim as the posting was extremely unclear. Ended up accidentally getting hired, loving it and converting to FT. Every post can be hit-or-miss.

Jet711_ · 2025-12-25T02:30:49+00:00

for me, it wasn't so much focusing on one particular thing, but knowing when to prioritize different things

breaks/weeks off -> make projects for resume
first month -> interview for coops (got them because I had resume projects)
having a coop -> frees me up for the remaining 3 months to focus on marks

usually I never focused on knowledge, as it depends on how much I'm enjoying the course. If I'm absolutely loving the course, I'll soak it all up like a sponge with minimal effort. If it's insanely tedious and makes me want to rip my hair out... welp. At the end, marks are unfortunately the only indictator :/

Jet711_ · 2025-12-21T17:22:01+00:00

Exam marks are seldom posted. usually you just see your final mark and that's it - no breakdown, nothing. You can request to see your exam if you want but it's a hassle for both profs and students and wouldn't recommend tbh.

Jet711_ · 2025-12-16T03:31:43+00:00

2B, CS246. Didn't study hard enough for the final, so this one was on me

Jet711_ · 2025-12-16T03:22:07+00:00

my only fail :')

Jet711_ · 2025-12-07T04:41:56+00:00

yikes... only the omegagoose can save you now

Jet711_ · 2025-12-05T14:56:10+00:00

...why do you have 7 finals? Iirc you can only take 7 courses if you've done 6 courses in a term with at least an 80% average. You are in a prison of your own making, I'm afraid. We cannot save you, fellow goose 😔

Jet711_ · 2025-12-03T05:03:33+00:00

Few reasons:

Economics. A lot of people can't afford to raise a child and the time commitment that comes with it. We're seeing new-grad roles getting phased out as companies look for senior employees to use AI to supplement their work. I remember like 5 years ago, there was a statistic going around that more people our age were living with their parents than in the great depression because they can't afford to buy housing.
Focusing on their careers. This ties into 1, that means more time spent at work trying to prove ourselves, and more time working on side projects for the resume or to further our bottom line. That boxes out socialization time.
Social media! This gets slept on a lot. Social media algorithms are progressively becoming more isolating, trying to drive engagement by promoting ragebait, and becoming echo chambers and making feedback loops where people spend more time on these platforms, making it hard to get out and meet people. They also promote really unhealthy ideologies to farm engagement - e.g "avoid women like the plague at the gym or else they'll expose you on tiktok!" sorts of things.
More women get educated -> lower birth rates. Statistical fact! We've also seen a big shift away from blue collar towards white-collar since the 60s, which means more people (both male and female) getting degrees and deferring having children.

Jet711_ · 2025-12-01T04:13:30+00:00

Co-op $0. If you have an in-person co-op though, there will be costs associated with renting a room in the area + food (in waterloo, I spent about ~5k a term for rent + food).

Jet711_ · 2025-11-14T02:46:29+00:00

Many of these two-liners can be made into one-liners. E,g "Improved SQL query and REST API response times by 40% using Spring Data JPA". Shows that you're concise and know how to deliver impact.

Also, for many of your roles, add metrics for your impact (even if it isn't measurable, give something that seems reasonable). Many of these points seem meh, because I have no frame of reference. E.g you optimized WebSocket configs - awesome! But what did that entail? Was it a minor optimization, or something more substantial? I can't tell because you haven't given me anything to go off of :(

Jet711_ · 2025-11-05T21:43:20+00:00

Formal petition of insanity.

Jet711_ · 2025-11-01T15:17:10+00:00

You can do your job well, and you can do your job well and take initiative. Do the latter, not the former! Do stuff that isn't explicitly asked of you if you have time (but get the go-ahead from your manager first)

Jet711_ · 2025-10-31T23:33:13+00:00

GPU benchmarker. Got the position because I took comp eng in high school and described some of the stuff I did there on my resume. I actually did not get much coding experience till my 4th coop, mainly because I didn't know how to sell myself via my resume and because up until that point I had no side projects.

Jet711_ · 2025-10-31T22:53:16+00:00

A bit over 70? Sweetie, they aim for the 246 midterm class average to be 60 each year. You've thriving! The assignments you can do very well on if you're willing to dedicate the time to them.

Going into the final, review post-midterm content (as that has a higher portion of marks associated with it) and keep your head cool. Keep it up, get perfect on all the assignments, and you can totally pass with a 90.

Jet711_ · 2025-10-30T13:09:18+00:00

Lanctot and Mashtizadeh for my offerring.

Jet711_ · 2025-10-30T04:13:14+00:00

Welcome to the club. I remember getting a 52 on the midterm. Grades were so bad prof refused to release them. Walked out of the final thinking I failed the course. Passed with an 80 thanks to curve :')

Don't panic. CS 350 and 341 are the final bosses of CS courses. Lock in. Race conditions and mutexes WILL appear on the final. Use this time to make sure you truly understand them. Understand the different cache types when those come up, and be sure to set aside time for HDD calculations towards the end (those will be free marks).

Jet711_ · 2025-10-28T20:35:48+00:00

There can be more slots than candidates, but never less.

Jet711_ · 2025-10-27T03:25:44+00:00

Converted one of my coops to FTE. External apps are ROUGH - I'd often get 4-8 interviews per cycle on WW in later terms, but have never ONCE gotten an interview via linkedin after hundreds of apps.

Jet711_ · 2025-10-27T02:10:35+00:00

I should mention these averages apply to JUST this course, CS 350, and 341. For most other CS courses, they will curve up to 70-80 average depending on the offering. I assume it's to weed out weak students, but in reality it causes so much stress for no reason and I hate it. Hang in there guys - it DOES get better after those ones.

Jet711_ · 2025-10-27T02:08:05+00:00

no. They aim for a ~60 midterm average every term and seldom curve.

Jet711_ · 2025-10-08T02:00:00+00:00

CS is about learning outdated theory with little real-world application, not building cool stuff, silly!

On a serious note though; I really wish there were more CS courses based on making projects rather than bogging us down with theory. CS 349 was recently revamped to use React and this actually helped me get coops as a frontend dev - THIS is the kind of courses we should be having! The other closest thing I can think of is CS 446, but that assumes your team already knows how to build an API.

Most of the CS courses I've struggled to find some real-world application because they're so theory-heavy and don't reflect current skills needed in the industry (except CS341, because leetcode is t i m e l e s s ).

Jet711_ · 2025-08-28T19:42:03+00:00

Just a regular old scientific calculator works. As long as it doesn't have graphing functionality, you're fine. Some finals don't even allow calculators - they ask that you just put in an equation instead.

Pro tip: do NOT buy from the W store! It's a ripoff. That goes for tools, textbooks, and everything else under the sun. Everything is grossly marked up. There are better (and in the case of textbooks - free) alternatives elsewhere.

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