zlacker

>>defly+(OP)
Here's what I don't understand about distributed systems: TCP works amazing, so why not use the same ideas? Every message increments a counter, so the receiver can tell the ordering and whether some message is missing. Why is this complicated?

>>ekjhgk+hVf
TCP is a one to one relation, distributed systems are many to many.

>>Ethery+sYf
You mean like UDP which also works amazing?

>>ekjhgk+C7g
UDP gives you practically no guarantees about anything. Forget exactly once processing, UDP doesn't even give you any kind of guarantees about delivery to begin with, whether delivery will happen at all, order of delivery, lack of duplicates, etc, nothing. These things are so far from comparable that this idea makes no sense even after trying real hard to steelman it.

>>Ethery+Eag
UDP plus increment means that the client can request a snapshot to be re-sent. This mechanism is used in financial exchanges and works amazing.

This illustrates that the webdevs who write articles on "distributed system" don't really understand what is already out there. These are all solved problems.

>>ekjhgk+Xlg
Or perhaps you've simply not learned the basics of actual distributed systems literature, and so are ignorant of the limitations of those solutions?