CMSC498B | PlanetTerp

Information	Review
Zaoxing Liu CMSC498B Expecting an A HashedString 11/21/2025	Really excellent class. The planetterp mapping is a bit wrong since I think special topics rotate, but I took him for CSMC498B Cloud Computing. This is what software engineering classes should be at UMD. It is by far the most useful class I've taken for going into the industry. The course is not particularly difficult either and there isn't much busywork. The docker stuff esp has been pretty fire. Plenty of guest speakers from industry (even got the founder of Canonical (Ubuntu) when I took it. The content is dense however in terms of reading and knowledge, but frankly with how easy it is / little homework you can get away without too much of a time commitment. The capstone can be a bit messy. I wouldn't overemphasize the "mentor" part of it since most of them are pretty busy with full time jobs and you won't have much content with them. To me this class was much more useful for the content rather than the project.
Zaoxing Liu CMSC498B Expecting an A Anonymous 12/16/2024	Alan was a great dude. Very interesting topic. The project partnered with an industry mentor was a nice thing to have. Manageable workload overall.
Zaoxing Liu CMSC498B Expecting an A Anonymous 12/07/2024	- This is a capstone course - Since it is new at UMD, kinda messy - Projects and team members were assigned halfway through the semester - You get partnered with an industry mentor for your group - ~3 sprint demo presentations for your project - 4 paper team write-up at the end - Graded by: deliverable(s) + team members rating + mentor rating - Expect Pop Quizzes on Readings he gives you (white-papers on mostly distributed systems/solutions) - Lecture are generally unengaging/boring unless you're really interested Google File System, Hadoop, Spark, etc. - Workload is not too bad - Professor is chill guy - Dont screw your team over frfr, do your part

Zaoxing Liu
CMSC498B

Expecting an A
HashedString
11/21/2025

Really excellent class. The planetterp mapping is a bit wrong since I think special topics rotate, but I took him for CSMC498B Cloud Computing. This is what software engineering classes should be at UMD. It is by far the most useful class I've taken for going into the industry. The course is not particularly difficult either and there isn't much busywork. The docker stuff esp has been pretty fire. Plenty of guest speakers from industry (even got the founder of Canonical (Ubuntu) when I took it. The content is dense however in terms of reading and knowledge, but frankly with how easy it is / little homework you can get away without too much of a time commitment. The capstone can be a bit messy. I wouldn't overemphasize the "mentor" part of it since most of them are pretty busy with full time jobs and you won't have much content with them. To me this class was much more useful for the content rather than the project.

Zaoxing Liu
CMSC498B

Expecting an A
Anonymous
12/16/2024

Alan was a great dude. Very interesting topic. The project partnered with an industry mentor was a nice thing to have. Manageable workload overall.

Zaoxing Liu
CMSC498B

Expecting an A
Anonymous
12/07/2024

- This is a capstone course - Since it is new at UMD, kinda messy - Projects and team members were assigned halfway through the semester - You get partnered with an industry mentor for your group - ~3 sprint demo presentations for your project - 4 paper team write-up at the end - Graded by: deliverable(s) + team members rating + mentor rating - Expect Pop Quizzes on Readings he gives you (white-papers on mostly distributed systems/solutions) - Lecture are generally unengaging/boring unless you're really interested Google File System, Hadoop, Spark, etc. - Workload is not too bad - Professor is chill guy - Dont screw your team over frfr, do your part

Reviews for CMSC498B