mahesh’s blog

LLMs have revolutionized coding.

I’ve been building systems, teaching system design, and writing papers about novel designs for a couple of decades now.

We start with a re-definition and an observation.

“It used to be said there were two kinds of chairs to go with two kinds of Ministers: one sort that folds up instantly, the other sort goes round and round in circles.” — Bernard Woolley, Yes Minister [when the minister asks for a new chair] I’ve been inf…

Since moving from academic research to industry in 2017, I’ve worked on two software projects.

I posit that most software engineers (particularly those working on infrastructural systems) are destined to wallow in unnecessary complexity due to three fundamental laws.

Early in my research career, I had a chance to work with some of the best system researchers1 in the world on a number of really interesting system designs.

I’ve heard multiple times that a strong notion of leadership somehow simplifies replication.

There are at least five distinct paradigms for replication: Group Communication [0], Viewstamped Replication [1], MultiPaxos [2], Raft [3], and Shared Logs [4].

There are three questions to ask of any system: What abstraction does it implement?

The road to Paxos is a long one (as with other greek islands) and also somewhat elusive (it’s an island, after all).