Software Verification

Merel Steenbergen, MSc CS, 2022-2023

I took this course at the same time as the Distributed Algorithms and the semi self-paced semester course Web Science and Engineering in the second quarter of the first year of my MSc Computer Science. SV is one of the smaller courses. Something you should definitely know before starting this is that it’s mostly self-paced. There is a proposed schedule and there are two lab sessions per week in a flipped classroom style. Personally, flipped-classroom does not work for me and I just studied the course fully self-paced with the book and the assignments, which are both really good. The workload was around 14 hours per week, sometimes more, sometimes less.

The material of the course focuses on proving theorems in a similar way as we’ve seen in the Reasoning and Logic in the BSc (if you’ve studied that at TUD). It uses a language called Lean to do this (which is inconvenient for searching on Google). If you’d like to take a look at the material, the book is open-source and can be found here.

So to study this course, I would recommend curiosity, a fondness for puzzling and self-discipline. That will make sure you can keep up with the material, which you will need for the final project, which is an individual assignment. There’s multiple projects available and you can choose yourself. Per project there’s also different levels of difficulty with corresponding grades, up to an 8. Bonus points can be earned with the report.

During the course, you can ask questions to TAs, the teacher, and fellow students through Mattermost. I recommend to make ample use of this, it’s really valuable to help you understand what you are doing. This is one of the courses where you can get stuck at one problem for hours, and then suddenly progress a lot. I personally really liked this, this entire course was like a puzzle to me and, like Stefan, I like puzzles!

Sustainable Software Engineering

Merel Steenbergen, MSc CS, 2022-2023

In the third quarter of my master, I only took two courses, of which Sustainable Software Engineering was one. Since both of these courses are project courses, I did not have any exams this quarter, which is a nice extra.

This course, as the name implies, focuses on sustainability, which is something that is becoming more and more important in the world, but sometimes lacking within computer science. This is one of the main reasons I chose the course, since sustainability is something that concerns me in daily life. By definition, sustainability covers five main perspectives: environmental, social, individual, economic, technical. This course focuses on the first three [course website].

The grade of the course is determined by a few things: The essay for the first project (30%), software and essay for project two (60%) and presentations (15%). This is what it said on the website of the course, but I am not sure where the final 5% went. The projects and their content can be found on the course website as well (linked above).

The study load of the course was not too high, but it wasn’t a super easy course either. Overall, I really liked it, especially since it has a bit more societal impact than other courses. I would recommend this course to everyone.

Evolutionary Algorithms

Merel Steenbergen, MSc CS, 2022-2023

I took this course next to a multimedia course that has been discontinued by now and the Cyber Security Seminar course. I would definitely recommend some prior knowledge about algorithms, as the course is quite high-paced.

It consists of lectures, WebLab exercises, a project and an exam. The project and exam count for your grade. I really liked the lectures of this course. Usually, I cannot concentrate for that long on someone presenting, but during this course, I had no trouble concentrating at all. The lectures were also very useful for gaining more insight in the material and understanding it better.

This was one of my favourite courses so far, I might even want to do my thesis in this area. The only part I did not necessarily like was the project, as it increased the workload massively towards the end of the course. The exercises and exam were great for testing knowledge and the material was really challenging and fun to work through.

I would definitely recommend this course to anyone that is still in doubt!

Systems Security

Sven van der Voort, MSc CS, 2022-2023

My name is Sven van der Voort and I followed the Systems Security course in Q4 of the 2022/2023 academic year. This was one of the final courses that I took as part of the master Computer Science, at the end of my second year as a master student

The prerequisites listed for this course are Security and Cryptography, Network Security and a bachelor level Operating Systems course. I agree with the first and the third requirement, however I started the course without having done Network Security and this posed no problems, as long as you have a solid (bachelor) background in computer networks.

The Systems Security course discusses several security considerations when developing embedded systems, for example IoT devices. Concepts like physical security, architectural security, encryption, secure data storage and reverse engineering are discussed during the lectures and practiced with during the lab sessions. In the lab sessions you get hands-on experience with the aforementioned topics, usually by implementing a real attack on a dummy device or web service (e.g. an ESP32 device). The lab is done in pairs and has weekly deadlines and most assignments take at least 8 hours to complete, even with two people per team so don’t start too late! At the end of the course there is a written exam that assesses your knowledge of the lectures and the labs.

The course is taught in collaboration with University of Technology Twente meaning that half of the lectures and labs are taught in Delft and half of them in Twente. The labs and lectures in Twente can be followed online and it is not necessary to travel to Twente.

Personal experience Personally I found the labs to be the most valuable part of the Systems Security course, since you actually have to implement the attacks and run into all sorts of nitty gritty details. Besides, it is actually a lot of fun to hack the dummy devices and very fulfilling when you finally manage to break the system. The workload of about 16 hours per week is accurate for a 5EC course.

The main pain point of the course was the poor organisation and communication. Since the course a collaboration between Delft and Twente, we needed to register as ‘bijvakstudent’ (extra courses student) with UTwente, which took a lot of extra time at the start of the course. Furthermore the lab assignments from Delft were a lot more vague/open-ended than labs from Twente. However don’t let this discourage you from taking the course.

Systems Security is an interesting course with lots of opportunities to learn, especially from the weekly lab assignments.