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> I had been designing asynchronous distributed systems for decades but was struck by this quote from Pat Helland, a SQL architect, at an internal Microsoft tal
by gavinpc 10y ago
> I had been designing asynchronous distributed systems for decades but was struck by this quote from Pat Helland, a SQL architect, at an internal Microsoft talk. “We live in an Einsteinian universe — there is no such thing as simultaneity."
Had the author really not heard this idea from Lamport already?
- firethief 10y agoSurely, but that's beside the point. After decades of experience working in its cognitive neighborhood, the author finally got to know that idea well enough that Helland's point resonated with him. It's no simple matter to go from being aware of a concept to weaving the concept and all its implications fluently into ones thoughts. I'm familiar with all the main ideas presented in this piece, but I still found a lot to think about and took a lot of notes while reading it.
- adrianratnapala 10y agoTo be fair though, the practical upshot Lamport's work on distributed is let people try to produce systems which let other people pretend they live in a non-Einsteinian universe. In that model, Very Clever People build a consistent distributed database which merely mortal application developers can treat as if it were a single instance. I think Crowley wants application developers to just accept nature of distributed systems.