If you enjoy in knowing the theory behind it with absolutely zero coding, this would be the course. Its a lot of writing. You need to write a 8 pager about a topic literally every alternate week. And the week in between, there's a smaller writeup - check other reviews for the formats.

This is my first course in OMSCS, a perfect intro to the course. Me being from a non-CS background, I enjoyed the course very much. Many topics are new to me and I learned a lot. I'm 15 years in my career, and coding is not my day job, so I'm not particular about a coding class. It gives opportunity to learn the topic, and since you are to write a 8 pager, you are bound to read a lot of articles and in the process learn the topic really well. Actual workload just to know the stuff to finish off the paper would take around 10-15 hrs, but I took the opportunity to go through a lot of material, youtube videos (from other universities like stanford, harward, IIT) and it was very interesting to me.

Again, a lot of writing that you'll be tired if you're not interesting in reading/writing. If you're looking to implement somehting via this course, this is not for you. If you're thinking of gaining knowledge on systems design (for a typical interview), this is not the course for you. This is more like an intro to various diff technologies, so if you are curious to know the underlying working of the tech, then this is for you.