CS 324: Systems Programming - byu-cs/wiki GitHub Wiki

General Information

Attribute	Value
Semesters Taught	Fall & Winter
Typical number of sections	2
Technologies Used	C

Workload

There are four labs spread throughout the semester with homework assignments mixed in. Each of the labs were fairly challenging and you should probably plan on spending 10-30 hours on each. Each homework assignment will probably take 1-3 hours.

Hopefully this goes without saying but you must attend class if you want a good grade.

If you understand the concepts well and are comfortable in C, this class won't be much of a burden but will still demand a considerable amount of time. If you are not comfortable in C or miss class frequently, completing the labs will probably be very difficult and time consuming (I heard of some people spending 40+ hours on the last lab especially).

Learning Outcomes

Homework

There are also several homework assignments spread out between labs and midterms. These were very helpful in understanding the content for the labs and midterms. They were pretty manageable but plan on probably a 1-3 hours per assignment.

Projects

There are 4 main labs for this class (as of Winter 2018):

Shell lab
DNS resolver
Proxy (threaded)
Proxy (I/O Multiplexing)

Each of these labs were fairly challenging and you should probably plan on spending 10-30 hours on each. If you understand the concepts, they are mostly straightforward but the added challenge of programming in C adds a few hours.

Tests

There were two midterms. Each were challenging but the average for both was probably B+ to A- range. Definitely recommend spending a good amount of time studying.

The best preparation for these tests is actually doing the course work and attending class. This was not a reading heavy class.