This subject was wild. Wild in that it was so wildly poorly coordinated, even compared to AI (COMP30024), which should speak for itself. The computing faculty really kept on getting worse for some unfortunate reason, which genuinely disappointed me. Let's talk about 2 things - assignments and exam. Honestly, the subject itself is very easy, and truthfully the assignments are not different. However, the bad, awful thing about it is that the writer of the assignment kept on making things up along the way. Due to the deliberate vagueness of the specs, I could only assume we have full liberty, but we don't! Take that in for a moment. We must conform to some quite specific behaviors that were not at all specified. Worst of all, different tutors have different say on how we should approach it, and one of them admitted that they had agreed on something initially but later was changed, and then reverted back. It must be highly emphasized, though, that none of this was publicly announced, even the 'reverting the claims' part. So a bunch of people must have missed it and ended up implementing the wrong thing. If you wonder how that's possible, my guess is that the head tutor didn't think twice when writing the specs, and he agreed on certain things with other tutors but forgot about it. Least they could've done is make a megathread to clear things up but oh well. Now the exams. Similarly, exam contents are quite easy. But easy does not mean there aren't queries. And towards the exam date, almost NONE of the Ed posts were answered, at all (I haven't verified, but most of my friends told me they didn't allow most tutors to answer in fear of wrong answers, which is totally ironic). In short, this is quite an important subject but outdated one (still taught us inheritance and those dumb design patterns instead of actual industry approach such as inheritance vs composition). Unsurprisingly, it also happens to be the most horrid one in third year (and it's the easiest one too, which is saying something). Literally the only redeemable thing about this entire subject was the tutorial, but that's only because we have the best tutor ever (it was Rob so if anyone's taking, I do recommend taking his tutorial). I don't know about other tutors, so yeah they might be good too. Would definitely hope they improved it, though I doubt.

What this subject suffers from is a lack of material. When I was writing my notes it turned out that each lecture could be summed up in less than a page, at 12 lectures per semester that's not a lot. Most of the design advice they give you is basically intuition. The main part of the material is about 10 GRASP and GOF patterns, which are very simple and readily available on the internet, the hardest part is remembering their names. Tutorials were terrible. You get put into breakout rooms with a couple other people (who don't talk, because this is software engineering) and you complete some tasks basically in silence, the tutor comes around after two hours and gives you some high level feedback then leaves. I learned nothing new in them and dreaded them every time, but of course there is a participation mark so you have to show up. If these had been large-group discussions with the tutor involved (and teaching something) it could have been much more interesting. Similarly the assignments were simple to the point of being mind-numbing, despite being group tasks (I guess to test your collaboration skills, but that depends on your luck getting decent teammates). All they assess is that you've learned one or two of the patterns and can apply them in code and diagrams. Easy good marks but that's not why I go to university. Basically don't take this subject unless you really need someone to ELI5 software design to you.

Least favourite undergrad subject so far (had to do it for major). Content is outdated and lacking detail. Lots of contradicting information in the slides, and lecturers and tutors struggled to answer questions clearly. Canvas was very bloated and not nice to navigate. The projects were okay, but I had a good group (would be a nightmare with a bad group). Tutorials were very bad, just worked through the sheet in our group for 2 hours with about 10 minutes interaction with the tutor (which was not very valuable), would've appreciated some good 30 minutes explanations from the tutors since it is a 2 hour tute.

Poorly taught, poorly coordinated. The whole subject is a rip-off of the gang of four book, and teaches it in a more compact and useless way. I'm walking away feeling like I only have surface level knowledge. Only Peter EZes clear explanations were any useful

Awful boring lectures, completely unstructured material, no clear final goal. Amazingly irrelevant assignments, I'm still wondering whether they gave us a correct tasks. Tutors made their best to provide at least basic knowledge, only for that effort I gave 2 stars (otherwise I would give 1). Absolutely not recommended unless you have no choice.