CS 138: Home

Overview

CSCI 1380 is an undergraduate course in distributed computer systems. We will explore the fundamental principles and practice underlying networked information systems. First we will cover basic distributed computing mechanisms (e.g., naming, replication, security, etc.) and enabling middleware technologies. We then discuss how these mechanisms and technologies fit together to realize distributed databases and file systems, web-based and mobile information systems.

Prerequisites: CSCI 0320, CSCI 0330, or consent of the instructor.

  • Lecture time: Tu/Th 1:00pm-2:20pm EST
  • Location: Online Synchronous over Zoom (see canvas for link)

Forms

Documents

Course Policies

Collaboration Policy

The collaboration policy is available as a handout. You must sign the collaboration policy so that you can receive credit for the assignments.

Incomplete Policy

Incompletes are granted only under exceptional circumstances (e.g. severe illness, death in the family, kidnapping, etc.; too heavy of a course load is not sufficient reason for an incomplete). Getting a dean to certify your reason for requesting an incomplete helps, but is not sufficient.

Late Policy

Students will be allowed a total of four late days to be used on homework and project assignments free of charge, but no more than three late days may be applied to any one assignment. Students will be penalized by a letter grade on the assignment for each day it is late.
If you must miss an assignment deadline because of a religious holiday, you may also get an extension without using late days; please contact one of the instructors within the first three weeks of the course and fill out the form to declare such conflicts and we will plan accordingly.

Communications

We'll be using Piazza and Slack for almost all course-related communication. You can mark questions as private or public. Private messages are seen by all course staff, see the collaboration policy for guidelines of how to choose. You can also use cs1380tas@lists.brown.edu to e-mail the course staff regarding administrative issues. For sensitive issues that you would not like to discuss with the entire course staff, you may email the instructors and head TAs at cs1380headtas@lists.brown.edu.