I'll be honest, Chen Chen is not a great lecturer. Monotone, pretty thick accent, little engagement other than the occasional "any questions?", and the slides are just kinda boring. I was one of maybe 8 students that would regularly go to class time. You can definitely get by without showing up, most people did that actually.
Chat is very capable of doing most all of the coding portions of the homeworks, so do your best to suppress that temptation if you actually want to learn/practice effectively.
The grading system is a little wacky, but I didn't mind it. Just make sure you really really try not to lose silly points on the homeworks.

I also found out the hard way that submissions must be by midnight EST, no exceptions (I submitted 11:47pm while in Arizona)... the -10pts on one hw dropped me from a 94 to an 92 rip.