I think this is worth looking at to see the history of why building distributed systems is hard. Also this, "A distributed system is one in which the failure o

I think this is worth looking at to see the history of why building distributed systems is hard. Also this, "A distributed system is one in which the failure of a computer you didn't even know existed can render your own computer unusable." Is a good kind of funny explanation of what can go wrong. Lamport obviously did spend his career fixing the problem and we owe a tremendous amount to him.