Every week, there will be a lecture and a recitation:
  • The lecture will consist either of pre-recorded videos (accessible via Moodle) or live discussion (Zoom on Tuesday 12:15-14:00), depending on the topic of the week. The latter will be marked as "live" on the syllabus.
  • The recitation will be a live discussion on the readings assigned for the week (Zoom on Thursday 13:15-15:00). 

There will be two types of readings: 
  • Every week, we will ask you to read one or two technical papers that describe interesting systems (referred to as “Paper(s) of the week” in the syllabus). We suggest you do first a quick read before the lecture, in order to get the gist, then a more thorough one before the recitation, to understand each paper in depth (and go to the recitation with good questions).
  • In parallel, you will be reading Butler Lampson’s Hints and Principles for Computer System Design (referred to as the “BL paper” in the syllabus). We will map parts of this paper to each week or couple of weeks and ask you to read that part by the end of the allotted time interval. At first, it may be a lot to take in — BL likes to focus on the essence and eschews superfluous words — but we will revisit the key points from time to time. By the end of the semester you will appreciate and enjoy the paper.

Last modified: Tuesday, 15 September 2020, 19:40