With the advent of mobile devices, NoSQL databases and cloud services, you most likely already have a distributed system at your hands. Distributed computing is the new norm. Writing distributed applications is both more important and more challenging than ever. In this talk Jonas takes you on a journey across the distributed computing landscape. Along the way he discusses the decisions and trade-offs that were made when creating Akka Cluster, its theoretical foundation, why it is designed the way it is and what the future holds.

We will start with walking through some of the early work in computer architecture—setting the stage for what we are doing today. Then continue through distributed computing, discussing things like:

Important Impossibility Theorems (FLP, CAP)

Consensus Protocols (Raft, HAT, Epidemic Gossip etc.)

Failure Detection (Accrual, Byzantine etc.),

Current exciting research, like: ACID 2.0, Disorderly Programming (CRDTs, CALM etc).



All these ideas and approaches to distributed computing have influenced the creation of Akka Cluser. In this talk, Jonas explains what ideas influenced their decisions, the theory behind Akka Cluster and he provided some insights in the future roadmap too.

Everyone loved this talk at the Scala eXchange 2013, with lots of tweets buzzing around during and after the talk.

A lot of the ideas discussed in this talk have influenced Jonas to write (the first version of) The Reactive Manifesto, which explains the need for Reactive Applications: Applications that are Event-driven, Scalable, Resilient and Responsive. Skills Matter supports the Reactive Manifesto because we believe it is the architecture for the future. Indeed, the ideas and technologies that form the foundation of the Reactive Manifesto, have been shared and explained in many talks at Skills Matter over the last few years.