The author discusses the lessons learned by distributed systems engineers, emphasizing the importance of understanding failures and the complexities of coordination. They highlight the significance of feature flags for infrastructure rollout and the challenges of estimating capacity in a distributed system. The author also touches on the importance of metrics, emphasizing the use of percentiles over averages. A key point made is the need to design for failure in distributed systems and to exploit data locality for efficient processing. The content also addresses the challenges of social dynamics in system development.
https://www.somethingsimilar.com/2013/01/14/notes-on-distributed-systems-for-young-bloods/