Besides reading a lot, I always found it useful to build toy distributed systems parts. At least the blocks: rpc frameworks, locking and transactions, leader el

Besides reading a lot, I always found it useful to build toy distributed systems parts. At least the blocks: rpc frameworks, locking and transactions, leader election algorithms, consensus algorithms, etc. Even if incomplete and many times broken, the effort in attempting at least a PoC or a toy implementation has helped me immensely in understanding the challenges and limitations of each. It’s also important to play with real, production quality software, and stress it and understand its limitations under load or failure. Distributed systems fail in surprising ways.