Easily one of the best CS subjects in third year (which is genuinely saddening considering it's not even that great). This is THE computer science subject, with a lesser focus on the engineering side. I also absolutely adore Haskell so it was fun doing the assessments anyway. The assignments were challenging but fair, and I found them, while not very interesting, were definitely not bad and annoying or anything like that. The lectures were... okay? First half was terrible because we got a lecturer that was simply not great with explaining the concepts at all. Thankfully first half was not that hard. For second half, we got a different one which was quite a clear improvement imo. The tutorial questions are helpful and quite well-written, and I honest-to-god really appreciate that. Also, this is a subject I'm fine doing paper exams because it's kinda like a math subject at heart (then again this uni also enforces that to bloody declarative programming, among many other programming subjects; but the computing department inevitable downfall of this uni is a whole different topic for another day). Anyway, pretty decent subject. If you're into, or need Theory of Computation, or more trendy, Artificial Intelligence (the more algorithmic side of it), this is a certainly helpful one for sure.

POSITIVES: great content if you like the more nitty gritty CS. Tutors put in a lot of effort with extra videos and using the discussion board. Billys pre-tute videos were very clear. If you spend a lot of time going through all the extra material you will probably get more out of the subject than I did. NEGATIVES: lecturers just read off the slides and often were poor at explaining the concepts. Could make it a lot more interesting using interactive examples online (e.g. there would be web apps for turing machines) or using haskell to demonstrate the concepts. Maybe scrap the long lectures and make notes that the students can read (worked very well for real analysis and phil of logic subjects). Also maybe there was too much content? Could of worked on tying it all together a bit more instead of rushing through the topics. VERDICT: This subject should of been the magnum opus of my CS undergrad but the lectures made it often tedious to learn about. Maybe my expectations were too high coming into it because I heard great things about the past lecturer. I suggest taking the 2nd and 3rd year logic subjects in the philosphy department instead (or alongside) if you have the choice (same kind of content). 3.5/5

If you're like me and got really into the computing major because of the theoretical stuff in subjects like foundations/design of algorithms, this is probably the subject for you. It's the most pure, theoretical, mathematical subject in the computing degree by far. Harold is a brilliant lecturer and the subject is coordinated extremely well. 10/10.