Joseph Vybihal - McGill University, Montreal, QC

Professor: Joseph Vybihal

Department: Computer Science

College: McGill University, Montreal, QC

Rating # 1

Overview:

• Course: COMP303
• Grade Received: N/A
• Overall Rating: 3.0
• Course Difficulty: 1.0

• For Credit: Yes
• Textbook Used: No
• Would Take Again: No
• Attendance: Not Mandatory

Comment:

Nice person, but the assignments are completely nonsensical.

Rating # 2

Overview:

• Course: COMP206273
• Grade Received: N/A
• Overall Rating: 5.0
• Course Difficulty: 3.0

• For Credit: Yes
• Textbook Used: No
• Would Take Again: Yes
• Attendance: Not Mandatory

Comment:

nice person. Said everything on test would come from lecture and slides, which are adaptations from textbooks written by himself. Was true to his words. Ended up taking 206 and 273 with him, and most likely 303 this semester. Lot of time invested in hw and (re)reading lecture + notes by other profs of same class. Can expect work to pay off though.

Rating # 3

Overview:

• Course: COMP303
• Grade Received: B+
• Overall Rating: 3.0
• Course Difficulty: 3.0

• For Credit: Yes
• Textbook Used: Yes
• Would Take Again: Yes
• Attendance: Not Mandatory

Comment:

He will help you outside of class if you ask him. Lectures are alright, but his slides lack information. Easy midterms and assignments, but he writes them in a very unclear way, which gets confusing and results in silly points loss. Fair grading but with very little feedback. Not a lot of ways to practice and prepare, except by using the textbook.

Rating # 4

Overview:

• Course: COMP273
• Grade Received: N/A
• Overall Rating: 5.0
• Course Difficulty: 3.0

• For Credit: Yes
• Textbook Used: No
• Would Take Again: Yes
• Attendance: Not Mandatory

Comment:

He was ok. The final is not hard as it may seem. I think it was relatively easier than the midterms in my opinion. The level of difficulty varies in his assignments. Some are very time-consuming, and then there are some that are incredibly easy. Overall, I consider him to be a good professor for this course.

Rating # 5

Overview:

• Course: COMP303
• Grade Received: N/A
• Overall Rating: 1.0
• Course Difficulty: 4.0

• For Credit: Yes
• Textbook Used: Yes
• Would Take Again: No
• Attendance: Not Mandatory

Comment:

Writes extremely unclear and bad assignments and exam questions. Explanations of concepts and ordering of material is mediocre at best. Only good quality is that he talks obscenely slow and so you can watch lecture recordings at 2x

Rating # 6

Overview:

• Course: COMP273
• Grade Received: N/A
• Overall Rating: 3.0
• Course Difficulty: 3.0

• For Credit: Yes
• Textbook Used: No
• Would Take Again: Yes
• Attendance: Not Mandatory

Comment:

Starting to grow on me, his slides are garbage but very easy to skip class and listen to lecture recordings on 2x, bring a highlighter to his exams as half the time is spent comprehending what the question is asking. Very nice guy though and I would say very fair when it comes to averages on exams/ listening to class.

Rating # 7

Overview:

• Course: COMP303
• Grade Received: A+
• Overall Rating: 1.0
• Course Difficulty: 1.0

• For Credit: Yes
• Textbook Used: No
• Would Take Again: No
• Attendance: Not Mandatory

Comment:

Pretentiously stresses good design principles but assignment specs require things to be done in the most inefficient ways, resulting in bad design. Not the professor to take if you want to learn anything useful. You're better off learning what you need elsewhere.

Rating # 8

Overview:

• Course: COMP206
• Grade Received: N/A
• Overall Rating: 4.0
• Course Difficulty: 4.0

• For Credit: Yes
• Textbook Used: Yes
• Would Take Again: Yes
• Attendance: Not Mandatory

Comment:

He can be unclear sometimes, but you'll just have to make an effort and go to his office hours to clarify things. He is very approachable, patient, and doesn't seem to judge no matter how stupid your questions might be. Certain assignments can be long and time consuming, but he had a huge team of TAs and help was very accessible.

Rating # 9

Overview:

• Course: COMP303
• Grade Received: N/A
• Overall Rating: 2.0
• Course Difficulty: 3.0

• For Credit: Yes
• Textbook Used: Yes
• Would Take Again: No
• Attendance: Not Mandatory

Comment:

He's a fine lecturer but his assignments and exams seem to be written with the intent of being as unclear as humanly possible, although they would be fairly easy if he could actually figure out what he's trying to ask of you. It should be easy to get an A if you learned reading comprehension by studying the works of small children.

Rating # 10

Overview:

• Course: COMP206
• Grade Received: N/A
• Overall Rating: 4.0
• Course Difficulty: 4.0

• For Credit: Yes
• Textbook Used: No
• Would Take Again: Yes
• Attendance: Not Mandatory

Comment:

Be prepared for a lot of very minor concepts to play a major part in the final exam. But Vybihal is a really good prof otherwise. Very clear and gave good examples.

Rating # 11

Overview:

• Course: COMP206
• Grade Received: N/A
• Overall Rating: 3.0
• Course Difficulty: 3.0

• For Credit: Yes
• Textbook Used: Yes
• Would Take Again: Yes
• Attendance: Not Mandatory

Comment:

Really not a bad guy, he cares about the material and readily answers questions in class and online. As a lecturer he is VERY dry. so much so I found myself sleeping in some of his classes. Slides are also somewhat disorganized so it can be hard to go back. However everything on the exam is on his slides.

Rating # 12

Overview:

• Course: COMP206
• Grade Received: N/A
• Overall Rating: 3.0
• Course Difficulty: 5.0

• For Credit: Yes
• Textbook Used: Yes
• Would Take Again: No
• Attendance: Not Mandatory

Comment:

I can't tell whether Comp 206 is a bad course or the professor is making it that way, but what I know is that there are professors that would make the comp 206 experience even worse. The course itself is weird and the change in the curriculum replaced useful content like python with not as useful content (advanced C). It is a super annoying course

Rating # 13

Overview:

• Course: COMP206
• Grade Received: B
• Overall Rating: 3.0
• Course Difficulty: 4.0

• For Credit: Yes
• Textbook Used: Yes
• Would Take Again: No
• Attendance: Not Mandatory

Comment:

I think that Vybihal would be a good teacher for some but I found the Powerpoints to be confusing and often lost interest. I do think that this was most likely largely my fault. I also found the assignments to be very difficult to be ready to work. I did very well until the final but that was my fault as well.

Rating # 14

Overview:

• Course: COMP273
• Grade Received: B-
• Overall Rating: 3.0
• Course Difficulty: 4.0

• For Credit: Yes
• Textbook Used: No
• Would Take Again: No
• Attendance: Not Mandatory

Comment:

The most difficult final I have ever taken. However the curve was very generous and that is apparently how he is with his other classes as well. Lectures are clear but it misses a lot of knowledge points he expected you to know. CPU design project was due 2 days before the final so it was quite brutal. However the grading of which is very generous.

Rating # 15

Overview:

• Course: COMP206
• Grade Received: B+
• Overall Rating: 2.0
• Course Difficulty: 4.0

• For Credit: Yes
• Textbook Used: No
• Would Take Again: No
• Attendance: Not Mandatory

Comment:

the final was brutal.

Rating # 16

Overview:

• Course: COMP273
• Grade Received: N/A
• Overall Rating: 2.0
• Course Difficulty: 5.0

• For Credit: Yes
• Textbook Used: No
• Would Take Again: No
• Attendance: Not Mandatory

Comment:

Gives good lectures but his exams are HARD and not directly related to the lectures/slides he gives us. We have to go in depth in the concepts of the course by consulting outside resources in order to get the required knowledge he expects from us. Gives questions that require more reasoning than what he shows in class and on topics barely covered.

Rating # 17

Overview:

• Course: COMP73
• Grade Received: N/A
• Overall Rating: 1.0
• Course Difficulty: 3.0

• For Credit: Yes
• Textbook Used: No
• Would Take Again: No
• Attendance: Not Mandatory

Comment:

Impossible to get an 80, even with the answer key.....

Rating # 18

Overview:

• Course: COMP303
• Grade Received: N/A
• Overall Rating: 5.0
• Course Difficulty: 4.0

• For Credit: Yes
• Textbook Used: Yes
• Would Take Again: Yes
• Attendance: Not Mandatory

Comment:

Professor Vybihal is one of the best professors I have had at McGill. He is nice and genuinely cares about his students. Going to class is definitely a plus because he likes using the blackboard to explain things! On top of that, his slides are clear and easy to follow, but you can also read the textbook since he follows it very closely.

Rating # 19

Overview:

• Course: COMP303
• Grade Received: N/A
• Overall Rating: 2.0
• Course Difficulty: 5.0

• For Credit: Yes
• Textbook Used: Yes
• Would Take Again: No
• Attendance: Not Mandatory

Comment:

He has a positive attitude and gives good lectures, that's it. 10 weeks into the semester and I didn't get a single grade back, heck I didn't even get back assignment solutions (except a blurry photo of half the first assignment sol). No way to practice, no way to know if it's right. Announcements are last minute too. It feels like he doesn't care

Rating # 20

Overview:

• Course: COMP206
• Grade Received: B+
• Overall Rating: 1.0
• Course Difficulty: 3.0

• For Credit: Yes
• Textbook Used: No
• Would Take Again: No
• Attendance: N/A

Comment:

+ Gives live demonstrations of programming concepts. + Down to Earth. - Does not focus on conceptual understanding or motivate material. - The midterm and final exams both involved writing C/Bash code on paper, including specific library/shell functions that were not the focus of the course. I would avoid having Vybihal again as a professor.