Mastodawn

Irene Zhang Mar 13

Just found the reading materials from my first systems class. 😍 Pretty great list. I loved the class and many people are surprised that it didn’t involve any coding whatsoever.

(Sorry for the lack of alt text, it’s too long for Mastodon’s limits. The photos are of a bound book with the reading list replicated here: https://web.mit.edu/6.033/2007/wwwdocs/reference.html)

Michael Engel Mar 13

@irene Whenever I see reading lists like these, I wonder if students really read all of the papers. I know my students here in Germany wouldn't exactly be happy if they had to read that much stuff – and many students sadly barely touch anything beyond the provided lecture slides and exercises...

@me_ I was just talking to @elba about that! And yes, I did get the sense that people read the papers. I certainly did based on my notes that I wrote in the margins. @dan would know better, he actually taught the class. But this class was certainly not an outlier even for classes that included coding labs. The senior level OS, database and distributed systems classes have a very similar format but with coding labs and a project.

Dan Ports Mar 13

@irene @me_ @elba Well, I'm realizing that the last time I taught that class was 15 years ago (yikes!), but my impression was that most people did read all the papers. Or at least most of them (hey, the students are busy!)

I don't know what the students are like these days, but it looks like the class is still taught using basically the same format.

@dan @irene @me_ @elba Dan we need to get the band back together, for one last grad class

Dan Ports Mar 13

@dev @irene @me_ @elba my relationship with the local university is now such that they no longer ask me to teach their classes, grad or otherwise

@dan @irene @me_ @elba woodland university time? (If that doesn’t ring a bell I forgor the name of your house)

Karl Statz Mar 13

@dev @dan @irene @me_ @elba we starting a pirate college?

Jonathan Yu Mar 13

@dev @dan @irene @me_ @elba All I know is that Miso is the Dean

Eric Eide Mar 14

@dan @dev @irene @me_ @elba "Many are not called, but few are not chosen." I think I read that somewhere?

Irene Zhang Mar 14

@eeide @dan @dev @me_ @elba should I offer to teach a class on sexism in CS? I have a great case study of how not to encourage women to stay in their PhD

@dan @irene @me_ @elba MIT is a special place. There's no way I would get Waterloo undergrads to read all these papers. But also MIT had faculty as recitation instructors where there was discussion of the papers in small groups (plus a token grad student doing one recitation section).

Dan Ports Mar 14

@va2lam @irene @me_ @elba hey that was me! The students had a choice between Butler Lampson and me. I hope I made it at least a slightly harder choice for them.

Dan Ports Mar 14

@va2lam @irene @me_ @elba for a while my CV listed the (true) statement "highest student evaluation of any instructor who was not named Butler Lampson"

@dan @irene @me_ @elba ha, nice

Irene Zhang Mar 14

@dan @va2lam @me_ @elba you should have gone with “does not have a Turing award” although you probably got higher ratings than several Turing award winners.

@irene @dan @me_ @elba surely!

@dan @irene @me_ @elba yeah, I did the minimal TAing during grad school and certainly not a recitation. Butler Lampson was on my committee though.

Irene Zhang Mar 14

@va2lam @dan @me_ @elba no, I’ve heard from my friends that are faculty at MIT that the students don’t want to do it any more either. I think they’ve had to either cut many of the coding assignments or readings or split the class over two semesters with less content.

@irene @dan @me_ @elba was it 12 units? That really is a bit more than 12 units of content.

Irene Zhang Mar 14

@va2lam @dan @me_ @elba yeah it was. Hilariously I took a light load that semester just to account for that. Then the next semester I took 6.828, 6.824 and 6.830 at the same time because 6.033 was a prerequisite for all of them and technically that was the same load as the quarter before.

@irene @dan @me_ @elba I TAd 6.826 which is certainly less popular!

Irene Zhang Mar 14

@va2lam @dan @me_ @elba oh I don’t think they offered that when I was there. I TAd 828 but it was only about 50 students I think.

Michael Engel Mar 13

@irene @elba @dan Good to know, thanks! I think 6.033 is a sophomore (year 2) course?

I'm preparing a somewhat similar undergrad course "System Programming" for our next winter term. I'm unsure if this will be a compilers course with focus on middle/backend (optimizations/code generation), since we currently don't have a compilers course, or a course similar to 6.033 that discusses systems in a vertical way, focussing on HW/SW interaction. I think I'll include more paper reading in any case...

Dan Ports Mar 13

@me_ @irene @elba The official story used to be that students were discouraged from taking it in their 2nd year so that they'd have more experience with computer systems, but in practice most people took it either in their 2nd or 3rd year.

Irene Zhang Mar 13

@dan @me_ @elba I was GOING to take it my second year but someone I was dating was TAing it so I had to wait until my third year. 😤

Irene Zhang Mar 13

@dan @me_ @elba and by someone I mean @dan. We did get married so I guess I will forgive him. Or hold a grudge forever.