> The Paxos algorithm for implementing a fault-tolerant distributed system
has been regarded as difficult to understand, perhaps because the original
presentation was Greek to many readers.
Ha! That's very clever, author. You clearly have a similar sense of humor to...oh, it's Leslie Lamport again.
When I first started reading seminal works in Distributed Computing, I picked up the original (The Part-time Parliament) and it started off pretty well with the made up story of finding the algorithm as a manuscript from an archeological dig.
The original paper then quickly becomes super convoluted by continuing to explain the algorithm by overextending that allegory. By the mid point of it I felt pretty exhausted.
It was then I learnt that the original paper was lying in limbo for nearly a decade until it was finally published.
Then at a conference, Lamport got tired of people telling him his original was difficult to grasp and so came this simplified explanation.
I still have my notes on the paper somewhere in my Obsidian. I should publish those.
"Paxos Simplified" (video & slides below) attempts to give a simple and clear explanation of Paxos. It is inspired by Leslie Lamport's paper "Paxos Made Simple".
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[ 3.4 ms ] story [ 20.9 ms ] threadHa! That's very clever, author. You clearly have a similar sense of humor to...oh, it's Leslie Lamport again.
The original paper then quickly becomes super convoluted by continuing to explain the algorithm by overextending that allegory. By the mid point of it I felt pretty exhausted.
It was then I learnt that the original paper was lying in limbo for nearly a decade until it was finally published.
Then at a conference, Lamport got tired of people telling him his original was difficult to grasp and so came this simplified explanation.
I still have my notes on the paper somewhere in my Obsidian. I should publish those.
- L9: Paxos Simplified https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SRsK-ZXTeZ0
- Slides https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1ossDCdSERSZmJXKfiCwD...
Check out https://www.distributedsystemscourse.com/ by Chris Colohan for more info.