Sistemas de Elevada Confiabilidade
Student Feedback
From all the distribute courses i took , the best one by far, if you like blockchain technology this is one of the few courses that explains that type of concepts.
SEC is all about building secure distributed systems, and it does a great job explaining the core concepts. The course focuses heavily on Byzantine consensus (about 70% of the project) and Blockchain systems (around 30%).
Byzantine consensus can be tedious and a bit difficult to grasp at first, but it’s crucial for the implementation. The Blockchain portion is more engaging—the course covers the most common systems like Bitcoin and Ethereum and gives a good sense of their real-world applications.
The project is quite long, so it’s important to start early. The exam consists of written...
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Disclaimer: I’m basing this rating mostly on the problems with how the project and labs were organized.
I actually found the theoretical content and the project itself interesting, but the way things were handled, especially in the labs, felt sloppy at times (Professor Paolo was our lab instructor).
Second project discussion
Only one group member was allowed to bring a computer to the discussion, and unfortunately for me, it was the member who hadn’t really contributed to the project.
Without any prior notice, the...
SEC is really great. The teachers say that is better if you had SIRS and DAD before, since this course uses concepts from both but I haven't had any of those and still had a great time.
Contents
The first part of the class is really about distributed systems (with an int of cyber) and the second part is about blockchain (the best part of the class imo).
Despite it being a great course, you need to invest a lot of your time in the project. Without good and coordinated colleagues, its...
The reviews below this point may be outdated. Course content, teaching methods, and requirements may have changed since then.
I recommend taking DAD and SIRS beforehand. In my opinion, this is one of the best courses in terms of theoretical content.
Professors
Professor Miguel Matos gives really good lectures, and Professor Paolo Romano as well. His only issue is the language barrier.
Exam
The exam is demanding, but if you study and attend classes, it’s totally manageable.
Project
The project is very interesting, but also quite demanding and...
Professors
This year, SEC was taught by Professor Miguel Matos. He is a cool guy who's a great lecturer.
Contents
The course content is basically the child of DAD and SIRS, so if you've taken those courses, you've already got about half of the theoretical material covered. It focuses especially on Byzantine faults, which aren't really addressed in DAD.
If you enjoyed DAD and SIRS, you'll probably love SEC. For me, it's by far the most interesting course in the Distributed Systems...