I found the concepts taught in this course interesting, but the lectures were far too fast paced (it takes twice the time to get through them if you actually want to get notes down as you will need to pause continuously). I also thought that the programming assignment was far, far too advanced seeing many people who take this course may not be familiar with C++ or programming in general. Even with my background being computer engineering, I found it challenging and spent much more time on it than the time suggested by the syllabus. Lastly, the homework was a major step up from lectures seeing there were minimal examples given in the lectures. Overall, the assessment was so ordinary that I would probably recommend not paying for this course. I kind of wish I could still get my money back.

If you want to do this course properly, double the time it tells you it will take for each part of it. You'll need to. If you're working full time and just looking for a hobby course, don't do this one. Or do it across two sessions, instead of trying to get it done in the 5 weeks. Don't do it if you want to learn how to use cloud computing - only if you want to research in cloud computing or need to know how it works under the hood.

This course would benefit from a slower pace and more detailed examples. I feel that everything was rushed and minimal guidance was given, which made the course not particularly enjoyable for me. Without some background in computer science, I think this would be a real struggle to get through at all.

Sorry for the lengthy review, I hope it helps someone decide whether this course is really for them.

The educational material do not meet the expected quality, as of many other courses. The instructor speaks too fast, with a lot of technical jargon in between each sentence, but does not interact with the user by annotating the slides. So, I had to keep moving my eyes around (reading compact text, or complex graphs) to try to make a connection between his words, and which part of slides he is speaking about.

Furthermore, I have excellent Python and Fortran and CUDA background, but not C++, so, I cannot do the final exam. I am gonna drop out of this course.

The programming assignment is very old style C code/C++ not using any of the updated/newer syntax. It required spending more time relearning old coding conventions than actually implementing the algorithms and such. Was very frustrating. The material and course overall is great, save that assignment, which is required to pass.

My experience with this course was mostly positive. The lectures were helpful and fairly brief compared to a standard university class. The instructor provides good examples and the presentation slides are a good study guide. FWIW, the workload for this course is much less than a graduate level CS course (at least in my experience).

The negatives about this class: The homework/quiz assignments often asked you to solve a scenario more complicated than anything discussed in lecture, and there's no book to go read to get a better understanding. This made for an unnecessarily frustrating quiz process. Other reviewers have already criticized the programming assignment, and I concur with most of the complaints. You end up wasting too much time working on things other than learning content related to the course.

Felt like the assignments were too good for what was covered. We have to Google outside the course material to understand many concepts. But loved the fact that we got chance to try some hands on. That clarified a lot about Gossip style protocol. But the contents in the course about Chandy-Lamport algorithm needs SURE restructuring. It is NOT AT ALL adequate to answer the assignments. I request professor, Coursera to have a second look at these topics.

The instructor's lecture sounded too robotic and I feel like he didn't make any effort to explain some of the principles or simplify the course to the audience. It feels like he just copied concepts and pasted them into the lecture and then read them quick.

This is a great course with a good balance of just theory and concepts, with practical ideas and exercises. The programming exercise can be a bit annoying, but was enjoyable nonetheless.

very happy with the course. got to know new concepts. assignments are awesome. enjoyed working on them. enjoyed the course. it would be good if we get a color and original certificate.

The course introduces many cloud computing concepts, and briefly highlights the trending technologies. It is a good starting point for the beginners, it also contains a set of challenging quizzes and final exam, one could not pass unless s/he masters the course contents. finally there is the programming assignment which would not sound easy until you pass it.

The course provided a good overview on various topics at sufficient depth. The assignments and quizzes were challenging enough allowing one to understand the concepts in good detail.

Seems a bit difficult in the beginning, especially if there is a long break from academics but a thorough and in depth course

The topics and lectures are pretty good. Some of homework in my opinion is too time consuming, especially week4-5.

An acceptable course to those who want to have an insight to cloud computing.

Having to do the coding assignment in c++ is kind of bad :/

The instructor seems to be in a hurry to get over the course and the course should rather be called a theoretical introduction to concepts in distributed computing. The slides are confusing with no animation. The programming assignment statement is just vague. Wouldn't recommend folks to pay and attend this. This may at best be for audit.

The lessons are a bit boring, an interactive blackboard or animated examples could help.

这人说话总是爱绕弯，也可能是我英语太差，听他这些停顿，无数多的从句感觉很头疼。

Not very engaging. Information overflow and poorly delivered lectures where the instructor is just reading from slides. I don't recommend paying for this, it is better to just check out the syllabus and read about this stuff online.

Note to instructor: Very simple concepts were explained using overly complicated language. Also, please refrain from over using the word 'essentially'.

I thought the class was quite good. Dr. Gupta is very knowledgeable about the subject and presents the material well.

This is listed as a beginner level class. I think it is worth noting that this could only be considered as beginner for people that already have a decent background in computer science. People not familiar with algorithm will likely sind themselves somewhat challenged.

One suggestion:

The quizzes are quite difficult, which is fine, however the only feedback you get is pass/fail. To give the student a better understanding of the material, it may be helpful to have a one or two question quiz after each lecture. These should be of the complexity that is expected on the exam (as compared to the in-lecture questions which are quite easy). For these mini-quizzes, solutions with explanations could be provided.

Lastly, the programming project is in C/C++. Many people seem to be complaining about why this isn't in a different language. Perhaps more of an explanation for the language choice is in order. (e.g. it wouldn't really make sense to implement distributed processing algorithms in Java due to the speed requirement.) C/C++ is listed as a prerequisite, so if you don't have this in your background, you should be prepared to spend some time learning at least the minimum, particularly use of pointers and pointer arithmetic.

A thorough conceptual overview of cloud computing, distributed systems and peer-to-peer systems and the way they function in failure-ridden circumstances. The course gives a holistic view of the various factors and considerations that go into the design and operation of large scale distributed systems involving thousand of discrete computers over an expansive and unreliable network. The course requires good knowledge of C++ in order to complete the programming assignment. The quizzes and homework are mildly challenging and require patience to carefully work out the problems but the programming assignment is the one that will take the largest time commitment and it helps to get started early with it.

The course is very well laid out. Prof. Gupta has a very clear voice and is easy to follow. The tests at the end of each chapter are non trivial and really ensure you understood the concepts thoroughly. The course is fairly old (2012?), for a rapidly developing field like cloud computing, I imagine several portions of the course are probably out of date. I suggest the relevant portions of the course be updated periodically. Even if the course is not entirely revised, at a minimum add an extra section highlighting the new changes.

The course teaches a lot of core concepts of distributed systems (clouds included). The content is well delivered and the homework reflects the material very well. The homework is appropriately tough.

There is an optional programming assignment for setting up a distributed network of nodes with failure detection. I learned a lot about gossip based information spreading while doing the exercise. That said, the assignment is not clearly explained and it is hard to get started.

Overall I did enjoy the course and learned a great deal.

The presentations are very good, some of the best I've seen in a video lecture series. With this in mind, there were lectures where I felt a bit more explanation would have helped me. For those I found additional external resources.

I enjoyed the programming assignment; but, the assignment uses too many different ways of storing the address. One consistent way should be chosen between the Node / Emulation Layer / Member, preferably a non-char packed approach (unless the address is always handled as a plain text string).

Great course overall, personally I've especially liked the programming assignment! It's not production quality code for sure, but it was fun to implement, although if you don't have C++ experience, then it can be difficult.

The homework quizzes were hard, especially in the final weeks, and required retrying multiple times at some points — but it's definitely worth it, since the difficulty helps with gaining better understanding.

The material is covered in depth and clearly, the content is very current while still covering the historic origins and the development of the current state fo the art. It comes with evaluations that are not aimed towards memorization, but rather towards understanding the subject. As a cherry on top, they allow you to take a verified certificate towards credit on the Masters degree.