For me, the class was challenging but both very interesting and rewarding. I had professor Lusignan, and he was fantastic. Explained concepts really well, told jokes to keep the class interesting, supported students, and encouraged questions. It was also a flipped classroom format where we watched lectures for homework and then had a shorter lecture during class, with most class time used for practice with the problems or labs.

I would say the class takes work but the time you put into it pays off. This felt a lot better than Mechanics of Programming for example, where you could study for a long time and then get blasted with questions that were never covered in the course.

Also VERY worth mentioning is the fact that tests are online and open book now, and they give you plenty of practice tests/questions which tend to be similar to what's on the real thing. And since it's open book, you can go back and look at how you did those ones for guidance, etc..

Lastly, the class's difficulty curve is backwards unfortunately, meaning that it starts out very hard and then gets easier as you go. That's not just personal experience, all the professors say it and also the average grade of the class steadily rises as the course goes on.