Hacker Newsnew | past | comments | ask | show | jobs | submitlogin

This is just what I wanted, something that explained me all this amazing world of distributed computing and networking.

If someone could suggest a good book, that'd be interesting too (I've been looking at Unix Network Programming and The TCP/IP Guide for starting with networks).



That depends on what level of book, and what you want to learn from it. On "how real distributed systems are built", there isn't a really good book available in my opinion. I liked The Datacenter as a Computer, but it's scope is fairly narrow and is more focused on global infrastructure issues than software design issues. On the math behind distributed systems, Nancy Lynch's book Distributed Algorithms (http://www.amazon.com/Distributed-Algorithms-Kaufmann-Manage...) is my favorite, but it's getting to be quite out-of-date.

Absent a book, there are a lot of great resources online. High Scalability(http://highscalability.com/) has a good amount of quality links to distributed systems content, and some editorial content of varying quality. In general, it's a good site to follow if you're interested in how distributed systems are being used in industry. I also like to follow Aphyr's blog(http://aphyr.com/), Daniel Abadi's blog(http://dbmsmusings.blogspot.com/), and Henry Robinson's blog(http://the-paper-trail.org/blog/) and Peter Bailis's blog(http://www.bailis.org/).


As a side note, the second edition of "Datacenter as a Computer" was recently released: http://www.morganclaypool.com/doi/abs/10.2200/S00516ED2V01Y2...


Thanks.

Basically I'd like to understand all this Redis, ZeroMQ, etc. stuff, message passing, queues, etc.

Not sure if there's a book that explains all this, or if I have to do a bit of research by myself.


Just started working on an outline. I am no expert, but have faith that I can research and simplify an explanation at the same time :)

https://github.com/mixu/distsysbook/issues/2

(Edit: On hold waiting for author to wake up .. see issues list)



The Architecture of Open Source Applications books[1], while eclectic, seem pretty good from the chapters I've read. They have a few chapters about distributed systems--HDFS, Riak, and a chapter about "Scalable Web Architecture and Distributed Systems" (haven't read it).

1: http://aosabook.org/en/index.html


Distributed Systems: Principles and Paradigms by Tannenbaum is a classic textbook. It's considered pretty dry though.

I recommend strongly MIT's Distributed Systems course, both for the lectures and the labs. See http://pdos.csail.mit.edu/6.824

As a bonus, the labs (in Go) give you invaluable hands-on knowledge.


Another really good article on distributed systems along the same lines is this one: http://www.somethingsimilar.com/2013/01/14/notes-on-distribu...


KTH ID2203 Distributed Systems, Advanced Course, with Youtube video lectures http://www.ict.kth.se/courses/ID2203/video_lectures.html

By Seif Haridi, who co-authored 'Concepts, Techniques, and Models of Computer Programming' which is well regarded among functional programmers.




Guidelines | FAQ | Lists | API | Security | Legal | Apply to YC | Contact

Search: