It’s difficult to administer large systems. In this talk, Mickens will argue that we should just give up. Instead of asking large systems to do anything at all, we should focus on less quixotic goals like turning lead into gold, or stopping Pokémon from having delightfully idiosyncratic magic abilities. Using case studies involving popular systems for version control and automatic OS updates, James Mickens will gradually make himself more and more depressed, and then he will tearfully answer questions in a way that makes everybody feel awkward. Mickens will then sign copies of his book. Note that Mickens has not written a book.

Note: The video of the presentation is available on this page. Go to the Q&A page to watch that portion of the presentation.



