Pete Ware

Seriously, he's one of the best cis teachers at osu. He's very nice. He has a sense of humor. Lectures are interesting (not all the time, but for the most part). I also had him for 560, and 660. If you can take a class with Pete, do it. You'll learn something in his class as well.

Pete isn't the best lecturer, but he has a firm grasp of the material and is a pretty nice guy.

This is, of course, a very lab intensive class. A lot depends on the group that you end up in.

The tests really didn't help my grade in this class.

One can say that this instructor certainly knew his stuff. In fact, one of the most knowledgable people in the department regarding the Xinu material. However, teaching ability and knowledge of material are two different things. Even though he was very willing to answer questions during class, his lectures did not aid in stimulating interest or add much outside of just reading the text or interpreting some of the slides by yourself.

Perhaps some of this frustration also arose from a bug in Xinu itself, which this instructor was not able to correct throughout the quarter. This REALLY took the purpose out of 3 of the 4 labs.

The final was a decent one. Covered the topics discussed throughout the quarter.

Overall, this instructor is a great source of information, but is somewhat lacking in his teaching skills.

B-

Taking this class with Pete is not the horror story some people would make it out to be. His projects involved the SPARC architecture, which required the use of the ELF object file format. Many people were intimidated by the library used to manipulate files of this format, which led to an immense amount of whining. But then again, the whining made class all that much more interesting. I learned a lot about being a good programmer from this class, and the ELF libary forces you to write code in a style that many students don't get exposed to, which i found to be a good experience. But all the whining from classmates taught me a lot about how people can act. I'd recommened the class for the whining alone. You get to see how people respond to problems that aren't RESOLVEd cleanly, which is not always peaceful. Beyond that, I think Pete handles this class really well in giving a real-world problem.

Great class. Lots of review from cis660 and other classes, so the content is not overly challenging. The operating system studied XINU, a mini-operating system run on a SPARC system. New machines were added, and class size was small enough so the machine availability was not a problems as had been in the past. The only draw back to the projects was the fact that XINU itself was unuable for a good part of the quarter. The labs were interesting and addressed problems that os programmers often face in industry. Instructor has an unbelievable depth of knowledge of the subject. Willing to spend the entire class period answering questions. Need to have decent C knowledge. Not a lot of code, but need to know what you are doing.

If you want an easy A, then this is NOT the class for you. The course in general is pretty hard (30 hours per week min. from any instructor). Pete, currently working on his Phd, tries to add a sense of realism to all of his courses. In general, he likes to try new approaches to teaching this difficult subject. I found the instructor to be extremely helpful. He wants you to think and learn. Pete uses overheads to teach, thus the A in handwriting and their is no real "homework" outside the class projects. Good students, interested in learning tend to like Pete, students more concerned about their grade than learning tend to dislike his classes. Interestingly enough, it may be hard to get an A in his class (A- is a common grade), but it is even harder to get less than a C. Bottom line, most students work hard, and get a grade HIGHER than they would get in other sections. The key to success in CIS560 iis hard work and ask lots of questions.

Note: Any review that indicates that Pete is inept, unfair, or a failure at anything is simply wrong and should be ignored.

brdoco says it best: Pete has his classes setup so that the projects are software for the SPARC, unlike the other 560 classes who write for an imaginary machine. If you take Pete's section, you *will* work much harder. It's a good class.. but Pete's labs *will* make you work for your grade. I've heard the non-Pete sections had a much easier time.

Like the other reviewers on this page, I took CIS560 from Pete when he added the ELF file format to what he expected of the labs. This addition to the lab assignment added 10 hours of work (easily) to the already burdensome courseload. I would recommned taking this class from another instructor. It appeared to me, that for much of the time, Pete just liked to watch his students squirm, offering very little in the way of concrete assistance. His code examples (which wouldn't compile) for handling the ELF files were especially laughable. I would expect his degree of knowledge of these file formats from a student seeing them for the first or second time, not a "seasoned programmer" as Pete fancies himself. If this were a real project, in the halls of industry, which he were managing, he would likely have been fired.

You have been warned.

Pete has his classes setup so that the projects are software for the SPARC, unlike the other 560 classes who write for an imaginary machine. If you take Pete's section, you *will* work much harder. It's a good class.. but Pete's labs *will* make you work for your grade. I've heard the non-Pete sections had a much easier time.

Overall a good class. Things got confused.. and so my section (SP1999) got stuck with a whopper of a final lab. In my opinion, way too much was expected on it. That's why the project grade is so low. However, Pete's knowledge of what he's talking about made up for it. Pete's a good instructor.. I've had him since this class.. and I'll continue to try and get into his classes.

Good lecturer, and isn't uptight. you can skip if you want, or even sleep in class. he doesn't care which is just how it should be.