[akurilin]

Was fortunate enough to take Dr. Gupta's undergraduate-level version of this class over a decade ago. To this day I still remember how enjoyable and simple he was able to make this material, despite it being actually somewhat tricky. Definitely one of the best CS lecturers UIUC had to offer at the time.

[optimusclimb]

Jealous of such an experience. In my undergrad experience in the early 2000s, when things such as distributed computing came up in the higher level classes, it came with no context. The professor basically handed out, "Time, Clocks, and the Ordering of Events in a Distributed System", had us read it, and went straight in to minutiae. It wasn't until years later when it came full circle and I understood better how those things applied to computing problems I'd actually face.

Kids have it so much better now with the amount of open courseware/material out there so they can learn from the best, and most passionate teachers, and not just have someone jam through powerpoint so they can get back to their research.