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0 pointsmotorest1y ago0 comments

> I've found the rush to distributed computing when it's not strictly necessary kinda baffling.

I'm not entirely sure you understand the problem domain, or even the high-level problem. The is or ever was a "rush" to distributed computing.

What you actually have is this global epifany that having multiple computers communicating over a network to do something actually has a name, and it's called distributed computing.

This means that we had (and still have) guys like you who look at distributed systems and somehow do not understand they are looking at distributed systems. They don't understand that mundane things like a mobile app supporting authentication or someone opening a webpage or email is a distributed system. They don't understand that the discussion on monolith vs microservices is orthogonal to the topic of distributed systems.

So the people railing against distributed systems are essentially complaining about their own ignorance and failure to actually understand the high-level problem.

You have two options: acknowledge that, unless you're writing a desktop app that does nothing over a network, odds are every single application you touch is a node in a distributed system, or keep fooling yourself into believing it isn't. I mean, if a webpage fails to load then you just hit F5, right? And if your app just fails to fetch something from a service you just restart it, right? That can't possibly be a distributed system, and those scenarios can't possibly be mitigated by basic distributed computing strategies, isn't it?

Everything is simple to those who do not understand the problem, and those who do are just making things up.

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lucyjojo1y ago

you and the guy you are answering too are not talking the same language (technically yes but you are putting different meanings to the same words).

this would lead to a pointless conversation, if it were to ever happen.

motorestOP1y ago

> you and the guy you are answering too are not talking the same language (technically yes but you are putting different meanings to the same words).

That's the point, isn't it? It's simply wrong to assert that there's a rush to distributed systems when they are already ubiquitous in the real world, even if this comes as a surprise to people like OP. Get acquainted with the definition of distributed computing, and look at reality.

The only epiphany taking place is people looking at distributed systems and thinking that, yes, perhaps they should be treated as distributed systems. Perhaps the interfaces between multiple microservices are points of failure, but replacing them with a monolith does not make it less of a distributed system. Worse, taking down your monolith is also a failure mode, one with higher severity. How do you mitigate that failure mode? Well, educate yourself about distributed computing.

If you look at a distributed system and call it something other than distributed system, are you really speaking a different language, or are you simply misguided?

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