A lot of people are saying how they've worked on single-machine systems that performed far better than distributed alternatives. Yawn. So have I. So have thousa

A lot of people are saying how they've worked on single-machine systems that performed far better than distributed alternatives. Yawn. So have I. So have thousands of others. It should almost be a prerequisite for working on those distributed systems, so that they can understand the real point of those systems. Sometimes it's about performance, and even then there's no "one size fits all" answer. Just as often it's about capacity. Seen any exabyte single machines on the market lately? Even more often that that, it's about redundancy and reliability. What happens when your single-machine wonder has a single hardware failure? Sure, a lot of tyros are working on distributed systems because it's cool or because it enhances their resumes, but there are also a lot of professionals working on distributed systems because they're the only way to meet requirements. Cherry-picking examples to favor your own limited skill set doesn't seem like engineering to me.