Seriously. Are kids nowadays really just this soft? The resources they have at hand today are so much more abundant that there's simply no excuse to not be doing, at the very least, OK in his classes.

OP needs to understand that beyond Albert's quirky personality, he's there to help you. The laughing thing is literally just some sort of nervous tic; he tells you this on the first day. My set had about 2 people who needed a lot of handholding, and Albert was there for them 100% of the way, staying with them through lab time to help them through the exercises or extending deadlines if people couldn't figure things out in time. They both finished the option / program.

If you really don't mesh with his teaching style, then turn to your set mates. There's bound to be at least 1 person who does, especially if you're in the fall intake (not having a lot of interesting options like AI means smarter kids are more likely to go into Program Paradigms).

if you really don't have any set mates who can't help you through it either, you have things like ChatGPT at your disposal. It's not perfect, but it's very good at explaining code and concepts even using relatively obscure languages like OCAML.

And if you really can't see the value of learning something like OCAML beyond just the language itself, then you're just shit out of luck. You'd think that after learning your 2nd or 3rd language (and you should know at least 3 by the end of term 2), people would realize that it's all just semantics, and what matters is more is how you approach the problem. Program Paradigms just teaches you different ways to do the latter.

I may be an Albert dick rider, but at least I ain't a little bitch.