CS 4501

The course material was very practical, we got a good overview of important web topics like information retrieval, databases, networks, software design and more! Tom Pinckney is a fantastic lecturer and is great at explaining concepts to students in a quick and easy to understand way. He's a natural teacher. He's also very approachable and friendly and modifies the course goals based on feedback from students, which is awesome! Just as a note, I took this course with around 14 other students, so course dynamics might change a little with more students in the class.
Syllabus is on github if you are interested: https://github.com/thomaspinckney3/cs4501

Pinckney is a great professor and person. He is easy to talk to both in and out of the classroom. In general, Pinckney expects a lot of class participation so he really doesn't downplay any questions. Sometimes he won't continue lecturing until someone asks a question lol. The material is very relevant to software companies today. You get a good idea of some strategies, ideas, and a lot of basic knowledge (but not really covered in classes) on both technical and non-technical concepts used in the real world. The projects are pretty tough, especially in the beginning and if you have no background knowledge in the tools used, but I think the projects are pretty worthwhile. The material covered in class is tightly-coupled with the projects which is nice. They are done in groups of 2/3, but it is still a good amount of work since the projects are due every 2 weeks. Great class, I honestly wished I had listened more in class at times.

For anyone interested in web development or software engineering for the internet, I cannot recommend this class more highly. Professor Pinckney has come from industry and is an experienced professional in designing internet scale applications. He instructs students on key paradigms of ISA and the projects are the application of his lessons. Taking this class is a nice introduction to designing your own end-to-end web apps and learning the fundamentals of modern web development.

Course Title: Integrated Scale Applications
The existing reviews are pretty accurate. Pinckney is a great lecturer and he wants the students to understand in the class. There are 2 in class, open-note, open-web quizzes that are really straightforward as long as you listen in class and there are about 7 homework parts for a semester long group project of 2-3 people. The project is to create a marketplace site using Django and Docker. To succeed in the course make sure you get a head start in the beginning because Docker is a pain to use. This was definitely a worthwhile course because the lecture content, the professor and the TAs are A+.

Best course @ UVa to learn about everything that goes into web software development in the industry (real world).
If you want a job/internship that deals with web dev, this course is extremely useful and basically guarantees you a job if you learn what Pinckney has to offer.

You get the full-stack (back-end database, front-end design, logic, MVC, virtualization, etc etc ) engineering experience, learn all the newest/relevant tech used in the industry (Pinckney work(s/ed) at eBay).

The quizzes are incredibly easy 100% no issue.
The project, on the other hand, is incredibly in-depth (which is how you learn so much -- from hands-on experience). The project will take up a lot of time, especially if your team is trash, so make sure you find good teammates so you can learn as much as possible without having to spend 10+ hours each week on the project.

Pretty easy to get an A or A- if you just put in a bit of effort.

If you're lazy, don't take this course.
If you want a job at eBay, Amazon, any e-commerce company, or any company that requires web developers (basically all tech companies these days), take this course.
Guaranteed success in finding job if you take this course and not slack off.

This is a really practical course, you learn a lot about web dev and Pinckney has a lot of industry experience. This course does take a lot more time than your typical 4000 level CS elective, so I recommend you don't take this the same semester as any other massively time consuming course (OS, Comp Arch, etc.)

Extremely interesting and practical class. Make sure you get a good group or the class will be more painful than it needs to be (though it is possible to solo work, it's not fun).

Thomas Pinckney is a really fun, caring professor! And ISA is one of the most practical classes you can take. You learn about containers, scaling, databases, and more. The exams were all open internet and sent in via email, so they were not hard at all, as long as you understood the basic gist of most the topics. A lot of the work in this class is the group project, and they can be frustrating at times, but going to office hours should help. Really recommend.