Reviews for James M. Purtilo
Average Rating:| OtG Course: CMSC132H Grade Expected: A+ March 19, 2012, 9:59 am | Purtilo is a solid professor who respects his students. He is an efficient teacher, and he frequently ended class early, since we tended to get ahead of the other sections. He makes it clear that he is dedicated to producing "satisfied customers" of his students. |
| sportsfan1292 Course: HONR239R Grade Expected: A- May 14, 2011, 12:01 pm | Purtilo was an extremely engaging professor. The class was all and all fairly easy and as long as you turn in coherent thoughtful work, he'll give you an A. He brought in a ton of interesting guest speakers. Make sure you start on the paper early, it'll help you greatly when you have to cram down towards the end of the semester. |
| random Course: CMSC435 Grade Expected: December 20, 2010, 11:09 am | One of the most useless classes I ever took at Maryland, and Purtilo was mostly responsible for that. I learned almost nothing from this class, because, duh, he doesn't teach at all. Most of the class time is spent either meeting with your teams for the class project (will get to it in a sec). And even when he lectures, the topics are lamest and most useless. "Change is inevitable," he will say multiple times during the lectures. And that's about all you will get from this class (but didn't you already know that). Now about the class project. One of the most horribly designed software I have ever seen in my life -- Terpnav. The thing (hard to call it a software) has 10 different languages supporting it, is spread over multiple machines with source code that has no documentation, and even Purtilo doesn't know how to install and run the thing. But he persists with it every semester, makes students add features to it, which is not hard in itself, but dealing with this beast of a software is the most annoying part, and yet not worth it at all. And the final is a take-home, which is entirely based on the TerpNav project. So, almost all your grade comes from the class project. He will say in the beginning there will be smaller projects too (we had just one), but essentially what you do with TerpNav is all that accounts for your grade. Take this class with anyone but Purtilo. I have heard some other professors do much better job. |
| pukenukem Course: CMSC132H Grade Expected: October 18, 2010, 10:22 pm | DO NOT TAKE HIM FOR CMSC132 OR ANY INTRO-LEVEL CLASS......FOR AN UPPER LEVEL COURSE HE HAS NO EQUAL. Just so we are clear. Dr. Purtilo is a phenomenal professor, engaging lecturer, and an all-around wonderful person. However, he is simply not interested in teaching lower level classes. He instead will lecture on far more upper-level topics of overall software engineering and product development which, while very interesting, have little to do with the course material. He will occasionally go through the syllabus but blow through it at a staggering speed so no one can not learn any of it. In our class he did "show and tell" Fridays where he brought in ancient relics of computer engineering and explained their functions, inner workings, and how modern design has since expanded. For one interested in such a subject this experience is phenomenal, but anyone taking the course simply to learn Java would roll their eyes. If you enroll in his class you will want to attend every lecture out of interest, however, will have to pray that another professor posts their lecture slides and that your TA knows how to actually code in Java (or read the textbook I suppose...gasp!). My course took a significant amount of outside-lecture work. He has long left Java in his profession so any syntax question on its inner workings (you know, the entire midterm and final test material) he will do his best to answer for you and certainly take time outside of class to be sure he gets you the right answer. But this whole process could have been avoided by simply taking a professor more focused on lower-level programming. If you are competent learning material outside of lecture and are genuinely interested in computer science his knowledge, persona, and class complete a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to learn material beyond the textbook from a truly remarkable person. BUT If you are taking a lower level class to satisfy some random requirement his class will require a lot of unnecessary work. |
| vbury Course: HONR239R Grade Expected: February 25, 2009, 10:40 am | The class material was very interesting. Towards the middle/end of the semester we had guest speakers every lecture or so from all different fields of industry, including many from the three-letter-agencies. The final paper at the end was a doozy, but the trick with that (like everything) is getting started early. The professor, unlike most Comp Sci instructors, is very helpful and approachable outside of class. Overall, an enjoyable experience and a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. |