Brian Storti
brianstorti.com · Personal blog · on HN since 2015
Brian Storti writes explainers on distributed systems, databases, Vim and shell topics, including the actor model, Raft and replication.
What HN saysHN commenters link his posts on the actor model, Raft and Vim registers as clear introductions, though one prefers Paxos over Raft.
19HN people shared it
5linked it in comments
14stories submitted
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Most-shared posts
- 1Vim Registers: The Basics and Beyond4 people · 3 points · first shared 2019 · discussion on HN
- 2Stop using tail -f (mostly)3 people · 782 points · first shared 2015 · 207 comments on HN
- 3The Actor Model in 10 Minutes (2015)3 people · 7 points · first shared 2016 · 4 comments on HN
- 4A Primer on Database Replication (2017)2 people · 190 points · first shared 2019 · 12 comments on HN
- 5Understanding Shell IO redirection (2015)2 people · 3 points · first shared 2018 · discussion on HN
- 6Raft2 people · first shared 2019
- 7TCP Flow Control1 people · 2 points · first shared 2019 · discussion on HN
- 8Swim: The Scalable Membership Protocol1 people · 2 points · first shared 2019 · discussion on HN
- 9Understanding Bundler's setup process1 people · 1 points · first shared 2015 · discussion on HN
What HN people wrote when they linked it
ossm1db · 2022-09-08
If you aren't familiar with the Actor Model, it's worth investigating. It avoids a lot of problems you will experience with other paradigms. https://www.brianstorti.com/the-actor-model/
thaumaturgy · 2019-03-09
As an alternative to Paxos-related consensus algorithms, some projects may want to take a look at the Raft consensus protocol: https://www.brianstorti.com/raft/
Whereas Paxos tries to maintain a fully distributed consensus state, Raft instead proposes a protocol for automatically electing a leader node from a group of follower nodes, and coordinating the replication of the write log through that leader node.
I haven't had the pleasure of experimenting with either one though and would love to hear from people who have.
arnarbi · 2022-04-30
(Apologies if I’m misunderstanding and you already know this.)
Not specifying a register (e.g. "0) just means the commands, including x and p, will use the " register, aka the unnamed register. By itself, p is equivalent to ""p.
:reg shows you all the registers and their current contents.
This seems like a good description: https://www.brianstorti.com/vim-registers/
Edit: Oh I guess you are saying it was unexpected that delete or change commands clobber yanked contents of the unnamed register.
mrkeen · 2024-09-27
I'm on the other side.
I think Leslie Lamport asserted that Paxos is minimal, and that "all other consensus algorithms are just Paxos with more steps". I'm inclined to believe him.
I've implemented Paxos but I can't get through "Raft for dummies" style blog posts.
Regarding Raft [1]:
> The consensus problem is divided into three sub-problems: Leader election, Replication and Safety. What is leader election? It's a distributed system coming to consensus on a fact (i.e. who the leader is.) Then once you have the leader, you do additional steps. The entirety of Paxos is a distributed system coming to consensus on a fact.
When I read these posts, i see things like "timeout", "heartbeat", and I think: timeout according to whom? I read "once the leader has been elected", um, hangon, according to whom? Has node 1 finally agreed on the leader, just while node 3 has given up and started another election? I don't doubt that Raft is correct, but the writing about it seems simple by glossing over details.
Paxos, on the other hand, seems timeless. (And the writing about it doesn't trigger my "distributed system fallacies" reaction)
[1] https://www.brianstorti.com/raft/
al2o3cr · 2022-02-05
Who's "we" here?
https://www.brianstorti.com/vim-registers/