Really good lectures

I took up Prof. Abbadi's graduate course on Distributed Systems during winter 2011. I had great enthusiasm for the c ourse initially, but it turned out to be a super bummer. The coursework was pathetic. Too much theory and horrible choice of abstract research papers assigned for reading. His teaching was too abstract and the projects were a joke.

friendly and tend to give difficult quizzes. those problems are very creative but too hard for many to complete in 30 minutes.

This class was extremely enjoyable, although it was a decent amount of work I still found the material and lectures digestable. Abbadi is super enthusiastic and makes lecutures interactive. The projects were the best CS assignments I have ever had and you write everything on your own and can choose the language to do it in. AMAZING, must take.

I have never felt as passionate about a class as much as this. I hate learning a bunch of abstract concepts that I feel like I'll never use again, but the structure of the class forces you to put the concepts you use into practice, which makes you understand them on a much deeper level. Straight up sparked the joy in learning in me that I lost.

Great class that actually made me care about distributed systems. The projects were genuinely difficult for the first time in college I enjoyed every single obstacle that I encountered while doing them. 4 quizzes in total instead of a final/midterm allowed me to stay on top of the material periodically rather than cramming and helped for retention.