3 ms·

That's interesting because I had the opposite impression: important but hard to understand. I think this has been common since at least 2001, given this text on

That's interesting because I had the opposite impression: important but hard to understand. I think this has been common since at least 2001, given this text on his website: > At the PODC 2001 conference, I got tired of everyone saying how difficult it was to understand the Paxos algorithm, published in [122]. https://lamport.azurewebsites.net/pubs/pubs.html#paxos-simple https://lamport.azurewebsites.net/pubs/pubs.html#paxos-simpl... I didn't start working on distributed storage systems until 2007. Perhaps some people who read the paper in 1997 had a different impression. Edit: maybe we have different takes on this story from that same url: > My attempt at inserting some humor into the subject was a dismal failure. People who attended my lecture remembered Indiana Jones, but not the algorithm. People reading the paper apparently got so distracted by the Greek parable that they didn't understand the algorithm. You're saying they didn't understand the importance; I took that to mean they didn't understand the details. ... and reading onward from the section I quoted, it sounds like your take was correct!

dunkelheit 7y ago
The terminology surrounding Paxos is very unfortunate in my opinion. First there is this general air of mystery which is entirely unnecessary. Next, the paper talks about "ballots" and "voting" but the actual protocol is very different from what is usually understood by voting - in the protocol everybody just votes what the leader told them! Maybe call it soviet-style voting or something.
- furyofantares 7y ago
  I understand your complaint about the terminology and in the linked video that same confusion came up. But the terminology does make sense to me in the context of trying to reach consensus. When I’ve been a part of a group looking to reach consensus there’s an occasional ballot/vote taken to check for consensus and there isn’t a functional difference between abstaining and voting for some non-leading option. If you just say up front that there are additional logical constraints on when to abstain vs vote for the leader that make it work in a distributed system, then I think the metaphor serves to help think about it rather than confuse.
afiori 7y ago
At the very beginning people actually would not understand the value of the algorithm. This comes from Lamport himself, after having colleagues read the paper he asked them if they new a such and such distributed consensus algorithm and they could not think of one.

dunkelheit 7y ago

The terminology surrounding Paxos is very unfortunate in my opinion. First there is this general air of mystery which is entirely unnecessary. Next, the paper talks about "ballots" and "voting" but the actual protocol is very different from what is usually understood by voting - in the protocol everybody just votes what the leader told them! Maybe call it soviet-style voting or something.

furyofantares 7y ago
I understand your complaint about the terminology and in the linked video that same confusion came up. But the terminology does make sense to me in the context of trying to reach consensus. When I’ve been a part of a group looking to reach consensus there’s an occasional ballot/vote taken to check for consensus and there isn’t a functional difference between abstaining and voting for some non-leading option. If you just say up front that there are additional logical constraints on when to abstain vs vote for the leader that make it work in a distributed system, then I think the metaphor serves to help think about it rather than confuse.

afiori 7y ago

At the very beginning people actually would not understand the value of the algorithm. This comes from Lamport himself, after having colleagues read the paper he asked them if they new a such and such distributed consensus algorithm and they could not think of one.