Pinckney is awesome, and ISA is awesome. Favorite class I've taken at UVA. I can't recommend it highly enough. The material is very interesting, and Pinckney offers a really unique and insightful perspective - thanks to his day job at eBay. The class offers a brief intro to a lot of topics that are very important but aren't covered in any other classes, and you get experience working with a lot of tools that are industry standard. The homework writeups are very descriptive, to the point where the project work really isn't that difficult. Occasionally you'll get stuck on some annoying bug for hours, but that's to be expected. In general, the work is not bad. And it's actually really interesting - I legitimately enjoyed working on the project, and I know it'll be a great thing to put on my resume and talk about in interviews. If you pay attention in class, and are willing to put in enough time for the project, an A is very attainable.

Great class! Pinckney is a super smart and accomplished man, and he knows a lot about the current state of technology in the industry. The class exposes some practical topics such as containers, services, databases, scaling, etc. If you are looking to go into industry, then this class is a must take! There is a group project throughout the semester to which you add new things to every two weeks. It takes a good amount of time, but it is definitely worth it.