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The author appears to have missed cyclic dependencies as a barrier to cold restarts. In large systems, you could have built critical component A with no depende
by sangnoir 3y ago
The author appears to have missed cyclic dependencies as a barrier to cold restarts. In large systems, you could have built critical component A with no dependencies, and later on component B is built that depends on A being up. "A" gets redesigned and now depends on "B" being up (which is fine since B is already up). The knowledge of how to build (the original) A from scratch withers as old-timers shuffle off the organization's payroll (or mortal coil), and suddenly, you have a system that's impossible to bootstrap from 0.
- adityaathalye 3y agoOP here. A good point! I suppose we could say that modern paper currency was system B, built on top of bullion / system A ("dependency-free" as in gold exists in the Earth's crust independent of humans). And at some point currency was liberated from those earthly bindings, and became free-floating. So then question would be how to bring back free-floating currency, if we somehow shot ourselves back to the dark ages and forgot all about it. "Lots of luck" would be my best guess. (Because if we manage to go back there, we are likely to succeed at going back further and forgetting even more. These sorts of swings have multi-generational momentum I suppose.) > The author appears to have missed cyclic dependencies as a barrier to cold restarts. P.S. I am sure I have missed plenty in that stream-of-consciousness post (and mistaken a bunch too)!