I read the introduction to the series, and then the introduction to the first part, and I’m still not sure exactly what Kafka is, or why I (as part of ”every so

I read the introduction to the series, and then the introduction to the first part, and I’m still not sure exactly what Kafka is, or why I (as part of ”every software engineer”) need to know anything about it. The title suggests that the article(s) will convey some concepts that are useful in a broad sense, but from a skim, this looks like a lot of details about some database-ish product, which probably are good to know if you use that product, but not so much otherwise.