Historical instructor

Michael Swift

Adjusted rating
RMP difficulty
captured reviews
About this rating

Raw average: 3.95/5 from 19 quality ratings. The adjusted rating blends this with the UW review average (3.66/5), weighted as 20 additional ratings. Smaller samples stay closer to that average. Each captured review is counted once in the prior; this does not correct who chooses to leave a review.

RMP profile ↗ · All captured review dates; profile matched by name.

What students say

Original student reviews · all captured dates

COMPSCI 537
Quality 4/5Difficulty 4/5
He seems like a nice guy and is passionate about what he teaches. The projects in OS are pretty bad but the course content is interesting and presented well. The exams are also not hard and very manageable.
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COMPSCI 537
Quality 5/5Difficulty 4/5
good course but covers a lot of material and exams are hard. textbook is really good. mike swift is chill and is good at answering questions.
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COMPSCI 537
Quality 5/5Difficulty 2/5
A lot of people say that you should take OS with a certain professor, but I really don't think professors matter. OSTEP is genuinely the best textbook I've ever read. It explains things so clearly, and even though it is now very much outdated/wrong on some parts (ex: modern SSDs and data races), I highly recommend to just read the book for CS537.
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COMPSCI 537
Quality 5/5Difficulty 4/5
Swift clearly knows what he's talking about and is passionate about the topic. It's a lot of work but well worth the time. Definitely recommend!
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Personal experiences, not a representative survey. Profile matching and captured coverage are shown in the source details.

Classes with Michael Swift

No teaching recorded in Fall 2026.

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Recorded teaching history

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Teaching history may be incomplete. Course pages contain course-specific feedback and citations.

Instructor identity & provenance 
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