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I had been hearing a lot of negative comments about Fountainhead on Twitter. These comments seemed politically motivated, how the book is a dumb libertarian propaganda. I had to check the book out myself to see what the deal is.  The book started out well. I was surprised to see that, first this is a novel, and second this is an easy read. I was waiting an impenetrable intellectual literary text. The book turned out to readable and initially charming, even though it was written in 1940.  The book felt like "The Goal" novel , communicating a concept/idea in story form. The main guy is this guy, Howard Roark, he is the best architect ever. Rather, he is the God of Architecture. He is architecture in flesh. He is like the best architect ever. The book is not at all subtle about this. He is 1000% dedicated to his craft, and he is the best ever, and he brings out his uncompromised gift in every building he designs. He is uncorruptable and willing to suffer for his art. The first

Michael Whittaker , Joe Hellerstein's PhD student at UC Berkeley, has recently defended his PhD thesis on Compartmentalized Paxos . The thesis deconstructs Paxos and shows ways to reconstruct it to be more scalable by individually focusing on each component/role in Paxos. It is a simple but effective trick. Even after you learn the trick, you still keep getting surprised by how effective it is. When I say Michael defended his thesis, I am speaking loosely. Michael was not defensive about anything. He didn't have to be, his work spoke for him. Just watch his PhD presentation and you will understand what I mean.  Michael has a great talent for explaining things simply. Unfortunately this is an underappreciated talent, especially in academia. This may make it look too easy and effortless, and like you didn't do sophisticated work. This dude did not even prepare presentation slides for his PhD thesis (the heresy!), and winged it on the fly by drawing his protocols on an iPad. H

This is a pun on the saying "there is always room at the top". This is also the title of a famous Feynman lecture from 1959 , where he made a case for nanotechnology.  In this post, I will try to argue that there is plenty of room at the bottom for distributed algorithms. Most work on distributed algorithms are done at a high-level abstraction plane. These high level solutions do not transfer well to the implementation level, and this opens a lot of space to explore at the implementation level. But this is not just an opportunistic argument. It is imperative to target the implementation level with our distributed algorithms work, otherwise they remain as theoretical, unused, inapplicable.  Let me try to demonstrate using consensus protocols as examples. Someone else can make the same case using another subdomain. Be mindful of what is swept under the rug What is succinct at the high level could be very hard to implement and get right at the low level. Paxos seems simple , bu

Let's start with the impossibility results, a good place to start distributed systems discussion. The coordinated attack result says that if the communication channels can drop messages arbitrarily and undetectably you cannot solve distributed consensus using a deterministic protocol in finite rounds. This result is all about *the curse of asymmetry of information*. Reliable channels are needed for two parties to agree on something. Otherwise the two parties are stuck in a Zeno's paradox of "You may not know that I know that you know that I know" kind of information chaining. A classic paper to checkout on the topic is " Knowledge and common knowledge in a distributed environment ". Assuming mostly reliable channels and demanding majority acks, it is possible to solve consensus in a partially synchronous system. Paxos shows us how to do this. Paxos uses quorum of acks to get around the problem of "the agreement having to occur in one shot" as in

This is a favorite saying of mine. I use it to motivate myself when I feel disheartened about how much I have to learn and improve. If I do a little every day or every week, I will get there. If I get one percent better each day for one year, I'll end up thirty-seven times better by the end of the year.   $1.01^{365}=37.78$ Years ago I had read this idea in one of John Ousterhouts life lessons, and it stuck with me.  "A little bit of slope makes up for a lot of y-intercept" Recently I noticed another advantage of progress over perfect. The emotional  advantage. Progress is better because it makes you feel better as you see improvement. You are getting there, you are making ... progress. Progress is growth mindset . You have an opportunity ahead of you. Perfect feels bad.. It puts you on defense. You have to defend the perfect, you have to keep the appearances. You can only go downwards from perfect, or maintain status quo. Progress gives you momentum. As long as you manag

Programming How did you learn to program? I was lucky that our 5th grade (age 9-10) teacher knew how to use the computers in the school. I learned a little bit of BASIC on a Thomson MO-5. Then I had other hobbies until high school, at which point I joined a semi-formal programming class hosted by a math teacher. That's where I really cut my teeth with Pascal and x86 assembly. Later I got a degree in software engineering. Tell us about the most interesting/significant piece of code you wrote. I would mention two.  One is a critical component in a distributed system: several thousand lines of code, highly concurrent, performance sensitive, high risk (data corruption), lots of tests, months to get it right, years of refinements (optimizations, new use cases). Very valuable. It is far from perfect in several ways, but it worked very well in production for many years across many customers. An invisible part of a complex system. The other is a short script (a couple hundred lines), a mix

Programming How did you learn to program? In college Tell us about the most interesting/significant piece of code you wrote. contributed to zfs, oracle file systems (writeback, journal, snapshot compaction) Who did you learn most from about computer systems? books, internet, architects Who is the greatest programmer you met, and what is impressive about them? Brian bendelorf (ZFS on Linux) maintainer, Matt Ahrens What is the best code you have seen? zfs, tintri file systems, yugabytedb, linux kernel What do you believe are the most important skills to be successful in your field? understanding the fundamentals, not giving up, digging deep What quality or ability do you value most in a computer systems person? Ability to debug code which others have written, mainly to the point that the RCA (root cause analysis) is correct and not superficial Ability to write clean decent design code at speed Simplicity in the complete process of systems software development Adding meaningful debugging

Programming How did you learn to program? I started programming at a relatively young age, around 6th standard (in India). Initially leanred HTML, CSS from w3school and online tutorial blogs/videos, then learned C++, mostly from School curriculum book. In college, I throughly enjoyed reading "Thinking in C++". Tell us about the most interesting/significant piece of code you wrote. I remember the first project I did in school which I'm really proud of, even though it was more of a toy fun project. It was an image editor for BMP files, written in C++.  Who did you learn most from about computer systems? Hacker News, I have been following it since high school. Who is the greatest programmer you met, and what is impressive about them? Interestingly, my own definition of good programmer has changed few times. In college times, I used to admire programmers who had strong algorithmic skills required for ICPC like competitions, but lately I have realised it's equally importan

Programming How did you learn to program? Two MOOCs: "Python for Everybody" on Coursera, and University of Helsinki's Java MOOC. Tell us about the most interesting/significant piece of code you wrote. Decryption processor for use in Apache NiFi Who did you learn most from about computer systems? The Internet Who is the greatest programmer you met, and what is impressive about them? My co-worker. His ability to hold onto macro concepts and think about systems as a whole while coding, instead of tunnel-visioning and focusing only on the "micro" aspect of implementation, is impressive.  What do you believe are the most important skills to be successful in your field? Communication, critical thinking, and problem-solving (the latter two often going hand-in-hand). What quality or ability do you value most in a computer systems person? Strong communication skills Personal Which of your work/code/accomplishments are you most proud of? Creating a decryption processor fo

Programming How did you learn to program? Some college, some self taught, mostly on the job Tell us about the most interesting/significant piece of code you wrote. Cluster manager (leader election + fault detection/response) for HACMP/6000 in 1983. Primitive by today's standards, but cutting edge for its time. Used in production at a significant percentage of banks, retail stores, etc. for about a decade. Who did you learn most from about computer systems? Various senior/principal engineers at Encore when I was still junior in ~1990. It was one of the early UNIX SMP systems. Learned much of what I know about kernels, TCP/IP, multi-processor synchronization, memory hierarchies, etc. Who is the greatest programmer you met, and what is impressive about them? TBH some of the best programmers I've met worked primarily in Verilog, designing chips and tools around them - e.g. Wilson Snyder and others at SiCortex/Veripool. Huge volume, but also rigorous testing leading to *very* low de