21 years and counting of 'eight fallacies of distributed computing' (2025)
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Re: 21 years and counting of 'eight fallacies of distributed computing' (2025)
#2In this instance latency must’ve been 10 years, per my memory this paper came out in 1994
Re: 21 years and counting of 'eight fallacies of distributed computing' (2025)
#3On the one hand, the list isn't wrong.
On the other hand, more fortunes have been made by assuming that physics will catch up (closely enough, anyway) to computational needs, than by assuming that every byte and every cycle and every nanosecond matters.
Re: 21 years and counting of 'eight fallacies of distributed computing' (2025)
#4On the one hand, the list isn't wrong. On the other hand, more fortunes have been made by assuming that physics will catch up (closely enough, anyway) to computational needs, than by assuming that every byte and every cycle and every nanosecond matters.
Making money and being highly available are different goals.
Re: 21 years and counting of 'eight fallacies of distributed computing' (2025)
#5Do people actually believe these dot points or are they just out of scope for most applications to tackle beyond letting the user try again?
Re: 21 years and counting of 'eight fallacies of distributed computing' (2025)
#6Do people actually believe these dot points or are they just out of scope for most applications to tackle beyond letting the user try again?
Perfect demonstration of the fallacies in action! If you were used to developing applications on a self contained platform you would think something like “sure, if it fails the user can try again”
On a distributed system the user can only try again if the platform has remained stable, the failure is transient (*) and they have (crucially) have been given the information to retry.
The platform that provides a stable environment for the user to just try again has been built on these principles.
(*) there is one administrator assumes it is within the user’s power to resolve the issue
Re: 21 years and counting of 'eight fallacies of distributed computing' (2025)
#7In this instance latency must’ve been 10 years, per my memory this paper came out in 1994
According to Wikipedia it was first shown to Scott McNeally, but according to Deutsch himself it was more like 92…
Re: 21 years and counting of 'eight fallacies of distributed computing' (2025)
#8On the one hand, the list isn't wrong. On the other hand, more fortunes have been made by assuming that physics will catch up (closely enough, anyway) to computational needs, than by assuming that every byte and every cycle and every nanosecond matters.
Making money and being highly available are different goals.
Stock markets and commercial Telecomms beg to differ
Re: 21 years and counting of 'eight fallacies of distributed computing' (2025)
#9This article reiterates a lot of the Wikipedia stuff, while contradicting the main extant source which is Deutsch himself (https://se-radio.net/2021/07/episode-470-l-peter-deutsch-on-...). Nobody really knows who wrote the first four fallacies. They were just floating around it is Deutsch who pinned them down and it was Gosling’s endorsement that made them into the shibboleth that they are.
Re: 21 years and counting of 'eight fallacies of distributed computing' (2025)
#10This is highly relevant to the recent craze over microservices, which has settled down now (after un-neccasarily complicating systems at multiple companies).