Current instructor

Paul Barford

/5Adjusted rating
/5RMP difficulty
captured reviews
About this rating

Raw average: 3.07/5 from 28 quality ratings. The adjusted rating blends this with the UW review average (3.66/5), weighted as 20 additional ratings. Smaller samples stay closer to that average. Each captured review is counted once in the prior; this does not correct who chooses to leave a review.

RMP profile ↗ · All captured review dates; profile matched by name.

What students say

Original student reviews · all captured dates

COMPSCI 640
Quality 3/5Difficulty 4/5
Nice person, but lectures are a bit old fashioned(talk a lot about historical stuff and physical layer) and not recorded. Must read textbook in great detail and take notes carefully. This isn't a surprise if you look at his research focus, so decide yourself if you want a more modern style & content (take with Ming Liu) or Barford.
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COMPSCI 640
Quality 5/5Difficulty 2/5
Fairly big class, but Prof. Barford makes it feel like a discussion and the focus is on understanding the material. Really interesting, and Barford is so willing to go into in depth explanations during lecture. Extremely nontechnical course, tests are easy if you just listen/engage in lecture (do not skip class), plus 3 month-long Python projects.
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COMPSCI 640
Quality 5/5Difficulty 1/5
Amazing professor! Teaching a class as difficult as this and making it easy to understand is his specialty. There are a lot of big projects you work on and they are pretty difficult but he delivers lectures like Steve Jobs and his very passionate about his job. Would 100% recommend.
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COMPSCI 640
Quality 4/5Difficulty 2/5
He's a great lecturer but in every other aspect the class was kinda meh. The projects are fine. The quizzes are not super hard. This class is great for undergrad students who want to learn stuff from scratch but probably not as helpful for grad students who know a lot of this stuff and are really trying to get into the details.
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Personal experiences, not a representative survey. Profile matching and captured coverage are shown in the source details.

Classes with Paul Barford

COMPSCI 699

Directed Study

1–6 credits

COMPSCI 699 offers directed study projects for junior and senior students arranged with a faculty member.

Offering recorded · Fall 2026

Shivaram VenkataramanFred Sala+59 more

historical GPA · grades

Spring 2022–Spring 2026

Recorded teaching history

Explore courses taught by this instructor →
Browse recorded courses
TermCourseTitle
Fall 2026COMPSCI 699Directed Study
Fall 2026COMPSCI 790Master's Thesis
Fall 2026COMPSCI 799Master's Research
Fall 2026COMPSCI 899Pre-dissertator Research
Fall 2026COMPSCI 990Dissertation

Teaching history may be incomplete. Course pages contain course-specific feedback and citations.

Instructor identity & provenance 
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