926K views · Feb 6, 2020 · 1:19:35 · 5 HN recommenders · 7 mentions · discussed 2020–2025
The opening lecture of MIT 6.824 Distributed Systems (Spring 2020), introducing the course and core challenges of distributed systems. It begins a playlist that goes on to cover Raft and other consensus papers in Go.
Why Hacker News points people here: Recommended as the standard free course for learning distributed systems from real papers.
“Martin Kleppmann (author of DDIA)”HN comment, 2025
“MIT online trainig has this great YouTube playlist on distributed systems”
Great MIT distributed systems playlist including Raft
MIT online trainig has this great YouTube playlist on distributed systems, with one of the lectures being on RAFT [1,2,3]. The entire playlist [4] is probably worth your time, though. [1] Intro link [2] Part I: link [3] Part II link [4] Playlist for the course: this video
“MIT has published their recent Distr. Systems lectures[0] on youtube.”
MIT lectures covering time-tested papers
Not a book nor a paper, but MIT has published their recent Distr. Systems lectures[0] on youtube. Haven't finished it yet but it touches on papers that stood the test of times. [0] this video
“Not from stanford but I enjoyed these”
Learn systems from real-world design examples
Not from stanford but I enjoyed these: MIT 6.824: Distributed Systems this video CMU The Databaseology Lectures link You essentially learn systems by looking at lots and lots of examples of how good real world systems are designed.
“As a noob, I learned a lot from these.”
Breaks down complex topics approachably
Intro to Database Systems by Andy Pavlo - link MIT 6.824 Distributed Systems by Robert Morris - this video Designing Data-Intensive Applications (DDIA) - link Crafting Interpreters - link > What made it so special these break down really complex topics and make the concepts approachable. As a noob, I learned a lot from these.
“MIT 6.824 Distributed Systems by Robert Morris -”
Course that improved programming skills
Intro to Database Systems by Andy Pavlo - link MIT 6.824 Distributed Systems by Robert Morris - this video Designing Data-Intensive Applications (DDIA) - link Crafting Interpreters - link
“Good resources for understanding Distributed Systems”
Builds solid understanding of consensus, causality and split brain
Good resources for understanding Distributed Systems: - MIT course with Robert Morris (of Morris Worm fame): this video - Martin Kleppmann (author of DDIA): link If you can work through the above (and DDIA), you'll have a solid understanding of the issues in Distributed System, like Consensus, Causality, Split Brain, etc. You'll also gain a critical eye of Cloud Services and be able to articulate their drawbacks (ex: did you know that replication to DynamoDB Secondary Indexes is eventually consistent? What effects can that have on your applications?)
“it's still a language of choice for teaching systems design[1].”
MIT distributed systems course using Go
Web backend work at scale is all about building and maintaining distributed systems. Just consider the company where Go was designed ... And indeed, it's still a language of choice for teaching systems design[1]. [1] MIT 6.824: Distributed Systems - this video
