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I dont like raft personally. I think it does way too much "all in one shot" v.s. a layered abstraction approach you have to do with Paxos where you build up fr

I dont like raft personally. I think it does way too much "all in one shot" v.s. a layered abstraction approach you have to do with Paxos where you build up from the basics of consensus. The evidence that raft is more "understandable" rest on IIRC a multiple choice question test not on actually implementing the thing working correctly. But (without having seen the test, but being familiar with both algorithms) it is easier to answer questions about what raft is supposed to be doing than paxos, but paxos actually confronts you with the edge cases more explicitly that are still present in raft. Granted, both are hard to implement correctly! I just think that learning Paxos does lead to a more detailed understanding of consensus than raft. just my 2¢ and no one asked ;)

lokar 5y ago
If you like a more decomposed approach you may be interested in: https://www.usenix.org/conference/osdi20/presentation/balakrishnan https://www.usenix.org/conference/osdi20/presentation/balakr...
ziedaniel1 5y ago
As someone who TA'd 6.824 (Distributed Systems) twice, I 100% agree. It's easier to halfway understand Raft than to halfway understand Paxos, but implementing a consensus algorithm correctly requires understanding it fully. Once you start talking about e.g. the "election restriction", Raft becomes a bit hairy. (Hi Jeremy!)
- jlrubin 5y ago
  Hi back atcha! I took 6.824 under Paxos (I think we took it at the same time maybe? not sure if you were TA at that point) and then helped a friend when it switched to raft and good lord that seemed to be a worse for them.
  - ziedaniel1 5y ago
    (Yeah, I was not a TA then -- I took it under Paxos in Spring 2014 but only TA'd it after the switch to Raft)