chore: improve wording, grammar fixes

2026-08-27 17:45:24 +02:00
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@@ -4,12 +4,12 @@
 Whenever the course registration opens, make sure that you know what you want to do next semester,
 and ideally what you want to do the next few semesters.

-For planning, [StudyPlanner](https://www.studyplanner.ch/) may come in very handy, as it helps you keep track of what you still need to do and what you already have done.
+For planning, [StudyPlanner](https://www.studyplanner.ch/) may come in handy, as it helps you keep track of what you still need to do and what you already have done.

 For picking courses, you may want to read reviews of courses, which you can do on [CourseReview](https://coursereview.ch).

 ## What if I overcommitted?
-You can drop courses *at any time* (apart from the basics courses, whose exams you have to sit in one go).
+You can drop courses *at any time* (apart from the first year courses, whose exams you have to sit in one go).
 Thus, if you have bitten off a bit more than you can chew, drop one of the extra courses such that you are able to focus on the more important courses.

 If you have gone past the official de-registration period, you can simply stop attending the course, if it doesn't have graded attendance.
@@ -27,7 +27,7 @@ The average is the raw average (i.e. 3.99 fails) and taken *after* rounding for
 in semester 3.
 - **Basic Courses**: The basic courses are the eight mandatory courses in semester three and four. You need to pass seven out of them within two attempts each.
 If you failed one, you can *compensate it* with a *core course*, but only if you have *attended and failed* said course.
-Failing two or more basic courses twice and you are out of the programme and blocked from this programme. 
+Fail two or more basic courses twice and you are out of and blocked from the programme. 
 - **Core subjects**: These courses are typically taken in Semester 5 and 6, and you need to pass *at least* four of them.
 If you failed a basic course twice (or once and decided not to retake it), you have to pass *at least* five of them.
 - **Ergänzung**: This is a course from a different department, and it needs to be worth at least 5 credits. You can pick any from the approved ones on VVZ.
@@ -37,6 +37,3 @@ Three of these credits can be obtained through language courses.
 - **Bachelor's Thesis**: Should be self-explanatory, is worth ten credits.
 - **Seminar**: You need to participate in at least one seminar, worth two credits.
 - **Electives**: These are extra subjects you can take (and you will most likely have to take a couple of them) to fill in the remaining credits.
-
-
-Note that for courses that have a bonus, that bonus is *generally* added *before* rounding.
@@ -22,8 +22,8 @@ the grade of DM doesn't matter too much if your goal is just to pass.

 The reason that this course has this poor of a pass rate is that most students had not previously done proofs much, if at all, and if they have,
 most likely nowhere near as formal as is required in this subject.
-Thus, be aware that this course will, if you are trying to pass it and have not done much proving (and it doesn't come naturally to you),
-most probably be the highest effort course of this semester.
+Thus, be aware that this course will most probably be the highest effort course of this semester,
+if you are trying to pass it and have not done much proving (and it doesn't come naturally to you).
 Thus, at least factor in a whole day outside the lectures and exercise classes per week for this course if you fall into that category.

 Make sure to follow the course in any case!
@@ -38,7 +38,7 @@ I had to take that one due to being sick at the winter exam, so you can see what


 ## Linear Algebra (LA)
-<small>HS 26 link: https://ti.inf.ethz.ch/ew/courses/LA26/index.html</small>
+<small>HS26 link: https://ti.inf.ethz.ch/ew/courses/LA26/index.html</small>

 This probably is the most *straight forward* course in this semester, which doesn't mean it's necessarily the easiest (though it arguably is due to the predictability).
 Its lectures are good while Prof. Gärtner teaches and not all too great when Prof. Weissmantel does (may have improved since HS24, he teaches the second half of the course).
@@ -77,7 +77,7 @@ so the TAs can help you much more with your own questions.
 For the bonus, there (typically) are two timed bonus exercises, where you have two hours on a specific day to solve the exercises.
 In those weeks, I would recommend that you solve, or at least have a look at, the normal exercises.

-All hand-in happens via GitLab, and you should (ideally) an SSH key for the Git CLI, as that is more secure.
+All hand-in happens via GitLab, and you should (ideally) use an SSH key for the Git CLI, as that is more secure.
 See the [git guide](/guide/infra/git) for more details on that

 The exam is split into written and programming parts, both happening right after each other.
@@ -22,15 +22,15 @@ I had used [Azurios' summary](https://azurios.gitlab.io/page/summaries/) for stu
 Reading a summary obviously won't suffice, you should also practice using old exams, as the content and difficulty has stayed fairly consistent over the last few years.
 They provide the questions in both German and English and you may also answer in either language.

-**However**: Be sure to still follow this course along to see if you understand things.
+**However**: Be sure to still follow along to make sure that you understand the covered material and may ask questions in exercise classes.


 ## DDCA
 DDCA is a course with a professor that is quite famous in the programme, due to his energetic lecturing style.
 Furthermore, the entire course is live-streamed on YouTube.

-The course consists of lectures and mandatory (with *sort of* attendance (they don't check that you were there, but you have to be there to get your lab results graded)) labs,
-where you work with a Field Programmable Gate Array (FPGA) to develop *small parts* of a full MIPS processor using the Hardware Design Language `verilog`.
+The course consists of lectures and mandatory (with *sort of* mandatory attendance (they don't check that you were there, but you have to be there to get your lab results graded)) labs,
+where you work with a Field Programmable Gate Array (FPGA) to develop *small parts* of a full MIPS processor using the Hardware Design Language `verilog` in a team of two.
 They are quite fun, typically take about 2 hours and account for 30% of the entire course's grade.

 Thus, be sure to always do the labs, as passing this course is quite easy if you get (close to) the full grade in the labs.
@@ -4,17 +4,19 @@
 Semester 3 is an interesting semester in terms of the courses, ranging from well taught (Analysis II and TI) to atrocious (NumCS).
 The same applies also to Semester 4, but the courses there are easier for many people.

+<small>I have a summary (or even script) available for all the courses in this semester, see [here](/summaries/semester3)</small>
+
 ## Numerical Methods for Computer Science (NumCS)
 This is about as bad of a course as courses ever really get.

 ::: details The rant about the course {closed}
 The course was entirely reworked for HS2025, where I took it, switching from C++ and Eiger to Python with NumPy and SciPy,
 as well as changing the course structure and curriculum pretty significantly. The former of which really is an improvement,
-as most data science happens in Python using NumPy. However, since the professor is from the Maths department teaching a CS course,
-you can kinda see where this is going.
+as most data science happens in Python using NumPy. However, since the professor is from the Maths department teaching a CS course, you can kinda see where this is going.
+<small>He once had the brilliant idea to rant about "type annotation in Python bad" (i.e. one should *NOT* do it), which of course *generally* is BS.</small>

 While the content is interesting, the poor teaching really made this course a chore.
-Due to this, many people have stopped attending the lectures and simply went to the exercise classes, where TAs were working hard to explain the content in a more approachable way.
+Due to this, many people have stopped attending the lectures and simply went to the exercise classes, where the TAs were working hard to explain the content in a more approachable way.

 The weekly CodeExpert exercises also were a massive chore, with it not rarely taking longer to understand what the task was than implementing it,
 due to the very poor way in which things were phrased. This is one of the few cases where using AI is absolutely essential, as it can save you so much time
@@ -41,10 +43,10 @@ Not much else is to be said other than do your practice for the exam and you sho


 ## Systems Programming and Computer Architecture (SPCA)
-This course, while not *technically* bad is very underwhelming. The topic frankly is too broad for just a seven credits one semester course,
+This course, while not *technically* bad, is very underwhelming. The topic frankly is too broad for just a seven credits one semester course,
 which also doesn't help it much. Don't however be concerned that it would be very hard, it isn't.

-Having a good understand of many of the concepts taught in DDCA certainly won't hurt in this course.
+Having a good understanding of many of the concepts taught in DDCA certainly won't hurt in this course.

 You will be learning to program in C, but not *really*. This is the primary problem with the course:
 There is no incentive for you to do the exercises (which in fairness, are pretty cool to do), but so many great opportunities for making the course great were left on the table.
@@ -56,7 +58,7 @@ This you can do by solving old exams, or doing your own little project (or doing

 ## Theoretical Computer Science (TI)
 By far the most unique course this semester, it is known for having a mid and endterm exam, which, if passed on average makes you pass the entire course.
-Yes, you heard that right, if you pass these, you won't have to do the session exam!
+Yes, you heard that right, if you pass these, you won't have to do the session exam! If you fail, then you still have the chance to pass the course by attending the session examination.

 TI is a lot about learning to do certain kinds of proofs in a certain way.
 You learn that automatically by solving the exercises that you need to hand in weekly.
@@ -10,15 +10,15 @@ yes, even including NumCS
 ## Data Modelling and Databases (DMDB)
 This course is terrible.
 ::: details Why it is terrible {closed}
- They don't really teach you how to design DB schemas properly (which is quite challenging to get right)
+- They don't really teach you how to design DB schemas properly (which is quite challenging to get right and also important)
 - They instead teach you (not really well either) how to write queries (which is sorta pointless, because realistically you will be using something like Hibernate)
 - Instead you need to learn by heart what the time complexities of operators are, but are never actually given the formulas
- The materials are helpful in the sense that they point you to what you need to look up online (because they themselves are unusable)
+- The materials are helpful in the sense that they point you to what you need to look up online (because they themselves are unusable) and even sometimes fail at this.
 - The exercises often contain errors (but it was the first iteration of the redesigned course for me, so we'll give them a break there)
 - There are way too few query assignments to learn SQL properly (and they tell you to learn SQL, it's REALLY important, see below)
 - The exam was a cruise ship sized middle finger to everyone (primarily: MASSIVE difficulty spike compared to the exercises, All-or-nothing design EVERYWHERE)
 - SQL task in the exam was actually insane (>50 lines for each of two of the tasks)
- 
+- ...
 :::
 All in all, be aware that the exam is *MASSIVELY* more difficult than anything you have seen before it.
 You (almost certainly) have never before written any remotely as hard or long queries.
@@ -28,7 +28,7 @@ it's not worth your time.


 ## Formal Methods and Functional Programming (FMFP)
-As with most theory courses, this course is taught well, well organized and the exams predictable.
+As is the case with most theory courses, this course is taught well, well organized and the exams predictable.
 There are two graded midterm quizzes, that each amount to 10% of your course's grade, but only, if that improves your final grade.
 Preparing for these is really quick, as they don't cover that much in terms of materials and only take half an hour.

@@ -41,7 +41,7 @@ It is thus similar to Theoretical Computer Science and it really does feel like
 This course goes in the same category of courses as SPCA, underwhelming courses that have so much missed potential.
 You are primarily learning things by heart in this course, and if you already have some knowledge in this field, you will likely not have to study all too much for it.

-There is also a up to 0.5 grade bonus that you can get by completing two assignments during the course, each taking you between three and ten hours,
+There is also an up to 0.5 grade bonus that you can get by completing two assignments during the course, each taking you between three and ten hours,
 depending on your Linux and networking knowledge. These assignments really are what makes this course a bit more interesting,
 but are also where a large opportunity was missed: Making them larger and having them part of the grade, full stop,
 possibly even along the lines of what Compiler Design did previously (50% exam, 50% project, you need 51% or so for passing)