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Antithesis of a One-in-a-Million Bug: Taming Demonic Nondeterminism

138 points by eatonphil 3y ago

zitterbewegung 3y ago
As time goes on the bugs get weirder in a software project …
Taikonerd 3y ago
Cockroach DB is a very logical place to use Antithesis -- its original use case was for FoundationDB!
- WarOnPrivacy 3y ago
  Ah it is coding then. I was trying to work out what Demonic Nondeterminism might be and got increasingly excited about the possibilities. At the least - it would have included all the demon psych/religious backstory that we know about. I'd finally get some answers.
- wwilson 3y ago
  To be clear — many of us worked at FoundationDB, and we were certainly inspired by the testing technology we had there. But Antithesis is built from scratch, and WAY more general and WAY more powerful than the FDB simulator.
notresidenter 3y ago
Antithesis are doing a great job at marketing their product and building hype. Their platform looks really interesting.
- wwilson 3y ago
  Thanks! But just you wait… the really insane stuff isn’t even public yet!
  - thimkerbell 3y ago
    Uh.
wwilson 3y ago
Antithesis co-founder here -- happy to answer any questions about the company, the technology, or this particular engagement!
- mtyurt 3y ago
  What is your target market? Is it database companies, cloud providers etc. that implements a proper distributed architecture? If it is not limited to that, what would be the value Antithesis can provide to a company that utilizes a small-scale service oriented architecture that has its own share of distributed complexity?
  - wwilson 3y ago
    Database vendors are very natural customers, because they're distributed systems for whom correctness and uptime are paramount. But they're far from our only customers! We have tons of people who are doing exactly what you describe -- running a client-server architecture or a collection of microservices that need to be fault-tolerant. One of our theses is that the vast majority of real world "distributed systems developers" would never describe themselves that way and don't read the same blogs that all the database people do. Nonetheless, these people are writing distributed systems, and share the pain that we've all experienced. One of the most important tasks ahead of us is precisely to reach this vast "distributed systems dark matter" and explain to them how it is that we can help their day-to-day jobs.
- abtinf 3y ago
  I lead a platform engineering team. We have a lot of challenges that I think antithesis could help with. I’d like to try it. But… I did not know the history of foundation db until last week—specifically about the Apple acquisition and the resulting termination of client support and downloads for 5 years. So my question is, how can I trust the same founding team to not do that again? It’s one thing to get acquired by a company that would likely continue to support business users (Microsoft, IBM, AWS, even Oracle). It’s another to sell to acquirers that will likely shut down the public service (Facebook, Apple, Google). If I invest the time, money, and effort to adopt antithesis, I won’t even have the security of “well, at least we downloaded the packages before they went offline.” Maybe this is an unfair question. I think it’s great that you had a successful liquidity event with foundation. Yet I must manage risk.
grumpycamel 3y ago
Appendix is not visible https://docs.google.com/document/d/1hA7bpfAMyyAYix0lelUZLI7WhtsH5HDYHGFGpFbWc2M/edit https://docs.google.com/document/d/1hA7bpfAMyyAYix0lelUZLI7W...
- srosenberg 3y ago
  Sorry about that; should be fixed now.
38 3y ago
Personal and professional Go developer here. I will never use or recommend that my company use something called cockroach. Call me petty, but fix the fucking name.
Scaevolus 3y ago
> Note that a logical clock can be effectively derived from the precise CPU hardware performance counter–retired conditional branches (RCB). That's surprising, why is this preferred over RDTSC?

138 points by eatonphil 3y ago

zitterbewegung 3y ago

As time goes on the bugs get weirder in a software project …

Taikonerd 3y ago

Cockroach DB is a very logical place to use Antithesis -- its original use case was for FoundationDB!

WarOnPrivacy 3y ago
Ah it is coding then. I was trying to work out what Demonic Nondeterminism might be and got increasingly excited about the possibilities. At the least - it would have included all the demon psych/religious backstory that we know about. I'd finally get some answers.
wwilson 3y ago
To be clear — many of us worked at FoundationDB, and we were certainly inspired by the testing technology we had there. But Antithesis is built from scratch, and WAY more general and WAY more powerful than the FDB simulator.

notresidenter 3y ago

Antithesis are doing a great job at marketing their product and building hype. Their platform looks really interesting.

wwilson 3y ago
Thanks! But just you wait… the really insane stuff isn’t even public yet!
- thimkerbell 3y ago
  Uh.

wwilson 3y ago

Antithesis co-founder here -- happy to answer any questions about the company, the technology, or this particular engagement!

mtyurt 3y ago
What is your target market? Is it database companies, cloud providers etc. that implements a proper distributed architecture? If it is not limited to that, what would be the value Antithesis can provide to a company that utilizes a small-scale service oriented architecture that has its own share of distributed complexity?
- wwilson 3y ago
  Database vendors are very natural customers, because they're distributed systems for whom correctness and uptime are paramount. But they're far from our only customers! We have tons of people who are doing exactly what you describe -- running a client-server architecture or a collection of microservices that need to be fault-tolerant. One of our theses is that the vast majority of real world "distributed systems developers" would never describe themselves that way and don't read the same blogs that all the database people do. Nonetheless, these people are writing distributed systems, and share the pain that we've all experienced. One of the most important tasks ahead of us is precisely to reach this vast "distributed systems dark matter" and explain to them how it is that we can help their day-to-day jobs.
abtinf 3y ago
I lead a platform engineering team. We have a lot of challenges that I think antithesis could help with. I’d like to try it. But… I did not know the history of foundation db until last week—specifically about the Apple acquisition and the resulting termination of client support and downloads for 5 years. So my question is, how can I trust the same founding team to not do that again? It’s one thing to get acquired by a company that would likely continue to support business users (Microsoft, IBM, AWS, even Oracle). It’s another to sell to acquirers that will likely shut down the public service (Facebook, Apple, Google). If I invest the time, money, and effort to adopt antithesis, I won’t even have the security of “well, at least we downloaded the packages before they went offline.” Maybe this is an unfair question. I think it’s great that you had a successful liquidity event with foundation. Yet I must manage risk.

grumpycamel 3y ago

Appendix is not visible https://docs.google.com/document/d/1hA7bpfAMyyAYix0lelUZLI7WhtsH5HDYHGFGpFbWc2M/edit https://docs.google.com/document/d/1hA7bpfAMyyAYix0lelUZLI7W...

srosenberg 3y ago
Sorry about that; should be fixed now.

38 3y ago

Personal and professional Go developer here. I will never use or recommend that my company use something called cockroach. Call me petty, but fix the fucking name.

Scaevolus 3y ago

> Note that a logical clock can be effectively derived from the precise CPU hardware performance counter–retired conditional branches (RCB). That's surprising, why is this preferred over RDTSC?