In all honesty though, I quite enjoyed how this article was written. Is there a listing somewhere of articles written like this, with algorithms or concepts explained using analogies to pop culture?
As someone who doesn't know/watched "Mean Girls" this seems confusing. Also I don't think it is fair to assume that reading of a blog post makes one to understand Raft better, at best they pique one's interest to learn more about it. IMHO Reading/re-reading of the Raft paper and working through an instructional implementation like (https://github.com/eliben/raft) provides a better understanding.
It’s not explaining any deep technical details. Think of it as a gentle introduction to the idea for someone to explain why they might want to read the paper, before reading the paper.
If the article was intended to be an intro to "Raft" algorithm I would've agreed with your sentiment. But this is what the article starts with:
Understanding Raft can be tough. In fact, I’ve seen conversations recently on social media in which actual technical leaders of infrastructure companies demonstrate a lack of understanding (!). Point being, you’re not alone.
Anyway I now notice that the article was written in 2023, probably I'm being too pedantic.
I think the point being made (I’m not the author after all) is not that they are misunderstanding how Raft achieves consensus, but what it means in the first place when we speak of it doing so and why that’s useful. By “technical leaders” here, one might think of CTOs, directors, and senior managers over technical teams rather than senior ICs.
Is that your real take? The girls have the power in that movie they manipulate the boys not the other way around. The adults are oblivious (except for Tina). There is no patriarchy.
It ably demonstrates the propensity of IT industry drive by commenters to be confidently, totally, utterly incorrect in every aspect of what they opine.
29 comments
In all honesty though, I quite enjoyed how this article was written. Is there a listing somewhere of articles written like this, with algorithms or concepts explained using analogies to pop culture?
Raft Is So Fetch: The Raft Consensus Algorithm Explained Through Mean Girls - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33071069 - Oct 2022 (53 comments)
Raft Is So Fetch: The Raft Consensus Algorithm Explained Through Mean Girls - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22520040 - March 2020 (4 comments)
restoration of packet messaging across unreliable transport.
Admittedly, this is Clueless (and way harsh) .. but I couldn't help myself.
> Mean Girls demonstrate how patriarchy shapes young girls, [...]
Of course, young girls have no agency and the only thing shaping them is the mean patriarchy... /s