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Once you've read this, pick up Harchol–Balter's book Performance Modeling and Design of Computer Systems: Queueing Theory in Action. It's a really good introduc
by kqr 4mo ago
Once you've read this, pick up Harchol–Balter's book Performance Modeling and Design of Computer Systems: Queueing Theory in Action. It's a really good introduction to the depth of this topic, and you'll come out with superpowers you didn't have before.
- hilariously 4mo agoEven if you just read the first few chapters of this you will not come out unchanged.
- pdhborges 4mo agoThis review is not so nice: https://emptysqua.re/blog/review-queue-theory-book/ https://emptysqua.re/blog/review-queue-theory-book/
- kqr 4mo agoI'm not sure how you came away with that impression. Three out of three reviewers say they overall enjoyed the book. The complaints fall mostly into four buckets: - "I wish the book was simpler" (Jesse) - "I wish the book was more advanced" (Murat) - "I wish software engineering was more advanced" (Andrew) - "I didn't understand the arguments the author made for why studying single-server exponential response time systems helps with drawing conclusions for time-sharing, heavy-tailed response time systems" (Jesse) None of these paint the book in a bad colour, as far as I can tell. They say more about the reader's expectations than the book itself.
- pdhborges 4mo agoSure. But I'm trying to connect what you said: > you'll come out with superpowers you didn't have before. with the impressions from the reviewers. I don't think they got super powers from the book. In fact their outcomes mirrors my own outcomes when going deep into some math topics and then bringing them to work.
- jstimpfle 4mo agoThis book is one of the few books I own and I couldn't agree more with these reviews. I read maybe 20 to 50 pages of it, and didn't and up with a lot of practically relevant insights. I couldn't say it's a bad book, maybe it's even a good one. But theory about computer science is always waaaay to removed from practical reality. Only a tiny bit of basic theory is applicable in reality, and from then on, in practice we're just busy fighting with practical problems, we're hardly getting to the theoretic ones.
- wreath 4mo agoI don't think this is a good resource for an intro tbh. Unless you are interested in proofs and have some probability basics covered, it feels quite dense. I liked Principles of Product Development Flow a lot more because it was easier to digest, although it's a different application of queuing theory.
- kqr 4mo agoThat is also a good book containing a few practical applications of queueing theory, but it won't do anything to help you analyse your own systems on a more fundamental level.
- wreath 4mo agoYeah I totally agree. My point was that it can be intimidating as an intro book to the topic. Excellent material otherwise