Why Distributed Systems Are Hard

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Video with transcript included: bit.ly/3evw8FV
Denise Yu covers a brief history of distributed computing, presents a survey of key academic contributions to distributed systems theory including the CAP theorem and the FLP correctness result, and digs into why network partitions are inevitable today. Yu talks about why one needs to account for the human factor when designing a complex system.
This presentation was recorded at QCon London 2020: bit.ly/2VfRldq
#DistributedSystems #SoftwareArchitecture #Microservices

[@osamaa.h.altameemi5592]

The art-work in these slides is so satisfying. Best presentation graphics I have seen in a long time.

[@swyxTV]

yeah I have no idea how long she must have spent on those

[@qizhang5749]

Weirdly makes the concepts easier to understand...

[@osamaa.h.altameemi5592]

@@qizhang5749 totally agree. I teach these concepts to my students on daily basis but the slides make them so easy to grasp and remember, it is more like watching an anime story that talks about distributed systems.

[@vigneshps9459]

Graphics on the slides and story or theme based on cats is just awesome.

[@nceevij]

One of the best presentation on Distributed System .

[@rami8846]

Loved your presentation. You made learning even more fun!

[@managerbmr]

So I found this after reading all DDIA!! 🤬 This would have saved me a lot of time and frustration if I knew about this beforehand!!

[@jasonmeyer495]

Very introductory content (but good refresher). Nonetheless, she's a terrific presenter. Superb communication skills and the drawings are great. I'd love for her to give talks on certain topics in depth.

[@eferrari96]

This is so relatable. I had to write a distributed engine for my bachelor thesis and my god was it hard to get it properly run.

[@maxespinoza8474]

Really enjoyed the explanations and pace, great presentation!

[@rrr00bb1]

I had a trade-off problem when trying to do offline-first in a system that got hosted behind a service mesh. You want strong consistency (ie: paxos) for a cluster that you will round-robin to arbitrary hosts with. But clusters brought together like continents need Strong Eventual Consistency, which basically means automated merges. The things that happened in the cluster are facts that we committed to. But the facts committed in isolation must have a CRDT structure to merge together. In a cluster, it's not that partitions don't happen... it's that partitions in a cluster can stop some members from getting work done (but you can round robin to the majority that are up). But between clusters on different continents, committed facts are like missle launches. You need a way to consistently merge the facts; not argue about which facts win. Thus, you need both Strong consistency in the cluster; and strong eventual consistency between clusters. Otherwise, from an internal point of view, if your datacenter cant reach the world...then they must stop work. This is ok for clients OUTSIDE that datacenter. But it's not ok if you need to keep collecting info and commiting transactions for your cluster until you can reach the world again. It basically means Paxos-managed clusters that store CRDTs.

[@mrseanpaul81]

Great talk!

[@srcmake]

Great presentation. Excellent speaking skills and I can't even fathom how long it took to create those slides.

[@armenarz4062]

Great presentation.

[@puddingmango]

This talk is so good it's the first QCon talk I actually followed the presenter on twitter in the end. Thank you!

[@valour.se47]

I liked every thing of this presentation, but the content is some what similar to the other presentations around distributed systems and microservices. But i guess it's a good refresher

[@Hmm1298-8]

All concepts are compiled from Designing Data Intensive Appliations.

[@michaelw9852]

I wish people in tech actually start caring about citing and maintaining bibliographies. its so sad that knowledge in tech is really really disjointed because no one either shares what they are summarising or they simply dont know where it came from.

[@treylitefm]

The Kubernetes Kool-Aid man @32:46 LOLLLL

[@pariveshplayson]

Superb!

[@mebinjacob_UF]

are these slides uploaded somewhere ?

[@bharat_arora]

I just opened for cartoons, why focus on distributed system if they are anyway hard

[@firmsoil7861]

अनुवादित् ---> How language restricts knowledge.

[@zad0m]

I don't agree that the accuracy of any single agent's own model decreases. The accuracy should stay the same and cover the business processes for that particular agent (subject) as it's supposed to be modularised in such a way as not even to know about the whole system. Then no matter how many modules you add they're accurate to their own domain. In programming, it's called interfaces. The challenge is to come up with tools and processes that allow to decompose and compose modules in a way that their own models are accurate for themselves, yet are also accurate for the overall model. stupid quote.

[@saurabhverma7366]

just had a cat overload

[@rubyh4184]

This doesn't include data privacy issue in which data of its citizen must stay in the country data centre.

[@jisesi]

I damn love the kitties

[@bhhmidi4]

21:15 *speed of time.

[@itdepends5906]

I don't understand - she doesn't even define 'partition tolerance' (not obvious to me by hearing the term) and keeps talking about it as if we all had agreed previously that that was an important factor to consider. She's jumping from one concept to the next too frequently..

[@mentorianx7932]

Is this really that complex or it's just made this geeky just to sound geeky - There must be an easier and translated version of this

[@karthikraghunathan4742]

way too less likes than this talk deserves

[@evans8245]

okay so..good talk. when you fit too much to explain into one presentation... you rush your explanations, giving people less time to process your information....any people in the future trying to give talks...don't add too much...keep it simple..seriously guys..i'm liek...frustrated abit

[@sju6416]

Worst infoq presentation ever