Comment by rs186

3 months ago

I followed his course 6.5840 on distributed systems (https://pdos.csail.mit.edu/6.824/, YouTube videos at https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLrw6a1wE39_tb2fErI4-WkMbs...) and completed the labs. One day, out of curiosity, I looked up his name. Then I realized what a legend he is.

Great course by the way.

12 comments

rs186

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Dave_Rosenthal  3 months ago

RTM was my TA at MIT for a CS/systems engineering course. It took the students until we did an assignment about the worm to realize who he was IIRC. The students thought it was very cool, but even then, as a TA covering the assignment, he didn't really talk about it.

  • arbuge  3 months ago

    He was also a TA at Harvard with Trevor Blackwell for CS 148 (computer networking, taught by H T Kung) at the time. I remember taking that with them in 1995.

tonyplee  3 months ago

Would be cool if he adds a session on how to hack distributed system in 1988...

  • oneshtein  3 months ago

    Account "guest" with no password was provided by default back then, to help others do some work remotely, debug connection issues, or chat with admins.

  • mindcrime  3 months ago

    > Would be cool if he adds a session on how to hack distributed system in 1988..

    username: field

    password: technician

  • PeterStuer  3 months ago

    Honestly, there was not very much security back in those days. So much relied on trusting the Internet "community" not to abuse.

pyyxbkshed  3 months ago

I am also doing the course now in my freetime. Even I wasn't aware who he is.

On a sidenote, what did you do after the course?

It is an amazing course though!

  • rs186  3 months ago

    Sadly, not much. My shitty job working on legacy systems doesn't really allow me to use it professionally. Still, I got a much better perspective on concurrency and systems in general, and when I occasionally see articles/videos about system design questions I could understand what they are talking about, which probably will be handy when the day arrives.

    I have a colleague who suggested that I could look at open source projects on distributed systems and get my hands wet, although I haven't had a chance to do that due to time constraints. Maybe something you could consider.