Distributed systems all suck (was Re: Bug #12 done, for real)
Avery Pennarun
> On Jan 24, 2008 4:52 PM, Avery Pennarun <apen...@gmail.com> wrote:
> > Probably under DistributedFileSystems or something of the sort.
>
> No dice. Oh well.
Darn it.
[...]
I found it! Thanks, Google.
http://research.sun.com/techrep/1994/smli_tr-94-29.pdf
Every ten years (approximately),
members of the language camp notice that the number of
distributed applications is relatively small. They look at
the programming interfaces and decide that the problem is
that the programming model is not close enough to whatever
programming model is currently in vogue (messages
in the 1970s [7], [8], procedure calls in the 1980s [9], [10],
[11], and objects in the 1990s [1], [2]). A furious bout of
language and protocol design takes place and a new distributed
computing paradigm is announced that is compliant
with the latest programming model. After several
years, the percentage of distributed applications is discovered
not to have increased significantly, and the cycle
begins anew.
Note that this was before XML, Web 2.0, etc. On the other hand, the
number of distributed applications has, er, increased significantly.
That probably makes the paper even *more* interesting to read again
now.
Have fun,
Avery