This class is billed as the easiest in the program, but I think that’s misleading. Nothing is difficult, but there’s just a lot of it, so it was one hell of a time sink. The grading scheme was weird when I took it (all or nothing with some revision opportunities), but I hear that’s changed. You’ll need to form groups of 3-5 people; I suggest 3. What people don’t get going into the class is that you’re NOT working together on a single project. Each person actually builds whatever s/he wants, and the group work comes into play when you have to build microservices for each other. So, when choosing your team, you really only need to be aligned on how complicated you want your projects to be (since, you know, an easier project probably wouldn’t require a very demanding microservice from a teammate). Anyway, I don’t suggest pairing this with a really heavy class because of how much time it eats up. (362, on the other hand, WAS an easy/lightweight class.)

Submitted Fri Aug 14 2026

Start and collaborate early as possible, get a good team by reaching out or checking the various channels (e.g. discord, slack, etc)

Submitted Fri Mar 20 2026

Understanding microservice architecture vs monolithic architecture and their pros and cons, and being able to speak intelligently about Agile helped me stand out in internship interviews. Super valuable there. A lot of complaints about 361 are common engineer complaints with Agile/Scrum. Yes, it's process/ "bullshit" heavy and that is pretty accurate to how it is on real teams. Grading is super lenient. Even if you botch a submission, you can submit a revision and get all your points back. I will say their section on UI/UX is the worst part. An absolute farce and I wish they had collaborated with CS352's professor to create better course materials, because CS352 is amazing.

Submitted Wed Dec 10 2025

Completely useless course with bullshit content

Submitted Wed May 14 2025

Try to get good teammates.

Submitted Fri Mar 14 2025

Prepare yourself for lots of bullshit

Submitted Mon Dec 09 2024

This class's project has you develop a main program and some micro services to go along with it. It's a good project, but you'd expect the provided textbook and modules to discuss micro services as well as software engineering principles.Those topics are present, but there's a lot of opinionated information within the textbook that serves no real educational value, and the amount of busy-work you have to complete is high. All the other assignments outside of making the actual program is utterly pointless. If you want to pass the class easily, find a partner who is making a simple program, and make a simple program yourself. Or you can use the project as an opportunity to learn new things which is always good.

Submitted Fri Oct 25 2024

The class takes as much time as you're willing to put into it, at least after the first few weeks, which are a bit more radical. But after that, I spent a lot of time tinkering around with my UI and code, because it was fun. You can also make your own life easier and just not. The group part is supposed to introduce Agile to you, but I guess it depends on your group how active they are. In the beginning, the group must make some decisions together (who's building what microservice for whom) and there was some confusion on what exactly we had to do, but after a while everybody can just focus on working on their own, main project, which is completely independent to the group. I'd recommend a smaller group. We were 5 and it just means you have to wait for 4 people to respond.

Submitted Tue Jun 04 2024

Class is not difficult and the concepts are interesting but there is a lot of busy work that I personally don't think accomplishes much. Putting together your individual project & the microservice w/ your partner is the best part of the class and can be as easy or as difficult as you want to make it. The grading can finicky and they will sometimes ding you for the most ridiculous things. Luckily they give you the opportunity to revise most of the assignments so it's still easy to get an A, but it is annoying to have your time wasted with things that should have been more clear in the assignment descriptions.

Submitted Sat Apr 13 2024

This is a truly horrible class. An easy contender for worst in the program. I don't usually agree when people call non-coding assignments "busy work", but I think it's fair to say that most things you do for this class have little to no educational value. There are weeks where you literally don't learn anything, as there are no modules that week. That might sound nice, but you'll still be busy completing a bunch of patronizing written assignments that seem like they were designed for high schoolers. The "textbook" is a series of superficial articles written by the instructor that should have just been the course modules (which mostly do not exist). If you actually want to learn about software engineering practices, look elsewhere. I recommend checking out the book Software Engineering: A Practitioner's Approach. My advice would be to pick a project that is easy to create but has enough moving parts that you have an easier time with the countless box-checking exercises. You will be asked to basically implement three features of a larger project that somehow meet 8 different user experience criteria. Even the professor ends up BSing the questions in her example video. Thankfully, there are no exams in this class. I strongly recommend NOT taking this alongside Operating Systems, as there's just too much frustrating frivolous work to waste your time. If you're looking for something to pair with OS, I think 362 is the better choice.

Submitted Sun Mar 31 2024