Link o' the day: A Note on Distributed Computing

Posted on March 15, 2014 by Tommy McGuire

I just had cause to look this up, and I had a devil of a time finding it.

"A Note on Distributed Computing", Jim Waldo, Geoff Wyant, Ann Wollrath, and Sam Kendall. SMLI TR-94-29, Sun Microsystems Laboratories, Inc., Nov. 1994.

We argue that objects that interact in a distributed system need to be dealt with in ways that are intrinsically different from objects that interact in a single address space. These differences are required because distributed systems require that the programmer be aware of latency, have a different model of memory access, and take into account issues of concurrency and partial failure....

We conclude by discussing what is required of both systems-level and application-level programmers and designers if one is to take distribution seriously.

This is one of the most important papers in network protocol history, and one that nobody seems to have read.