EECS 485: Web Systems

The University of Michigan

Winter 2026

A holistic course of modern web systems and technologies, covering front end and back end. Build an Instagram clone in the first half of the semester and a Google clone in the second. Syllabus

Congrats on finishing Project 1! Project 2 has been released. It is due Tuesday, February 3rd.

This Week

Due Tue, Feb 3rd

Spec Autograder

FAQ

Tutorials Bugs

In-person

Slides and Demos

Recordings

Schedule

Day	Lecture	Lab	Deadline
Week 1 Jan 7 - 9	L01 Introduction	Project 1 Intro
Week 2 Jan 12 - 16	L02 Static Pages L03 Server-side Dynamic Pages	Python
Week 3 Jan 19 - 23	L04 Sessions L05 Encryption	Project 2 Intro and Databases	Project 1 due Tue Jan 20 11:59pm
Week 4 Jan 26 - 30	L06 Web Security L07 REST APIs	Flask and Sessions
Week 5 Feb 2 - 6	L08 Client-side Dynamic Pages L09 Client-side Applications	P3 Intro and Rest APIs	Project 2 due Tue Feb 3 11:59pm
Week 6 Feb 9 - 13	L10 Asynchronous Programming L11 MapReduce	Asynchronous Programming and React
Week 7 Feb 16 - 20	L12 Google File System (last lecture on midterm) No Lecture	No lab	Project 3 due Tue Feb 17 11:59pm
Week 8 Feb 23 - 27	No lecture	No lab	Midterm Tue Feb 24, 7pm
Week 9 Mar 2 - 6	Spring break
Week 10 Mar 9 - 13	L13 OS and Parallelism L14 Networking	Project 4 Intro and MapReduce
Week 11 Mar 16 - 20	L15 Text Analysis for Web Search L16 Link Analysis for Web Search	Multithreaded Debugging
Week 12 Mar 23 - 27	L17 Scaling Search L18 Scaling Static Pages	In-lab office hours
Week 13 Mar 30 - Apr 3	L19 Scaling Dynamic Pages L20 Scaling Storage	Project 5 Intro and MapReduce Pipelines	Project 4 due Tue Mar 24 11:59pm
Week 14 Apr 6 - 10	L21 Recommender Systems L22 Ads and Auctions	Inverted Index Servers
Week 15 Apr 13 - 17	L23 Blockchain L24 Dark Web	No lab	Project 5 due Tue Apr 7 11:59pm
Week 16 Apr 20 - 21	No lecture	No lab
Exam Week			Final Thu Apr 23, 8am