Distributed systems

Jun 29, 2026

Platforms: Build Abstractions, not Illusions • Gregor Hohpe • GOTO 2025

Gregor Hohpe explains the critical role of platforms in managing the growing cognitive load on developers due to complex distributed systems. He contrasts platforms, driven by "economies of speed" and fostering innovation through diversity, with traditional IT services and oversimplified abstractions that create dangerous illusions. Hohpe emphasizes building platforms that provide intuitive, domain-specific abstractions to solve real business problems, rather than just repackaging existing cloud services.

May 15, 2026

Ye Cannae Change the Laws of Physics • Kevlin Henney • GOTO 2025

Kevlin Henney explores the limits of software abstraction, arguing that while software is an 'executable fiction,' it is ultimately constrained by the fundamental laws of physics. This talk deconstructs common metaphors like 'velocity' and 'roadmap' and delves into the real-world implications of physical constants like the speed of light and impossibility theorems like CAP.

May 14, 2026

Make your own event-sourced agent harness using stream processors — Jonas Templestein, Iterate

Jonas Huckestein introduces a novel, event-sourced architecture for building AI agents. The core abstraction consists of three parts: a state, a synchronous reducer that derives state from events, and an after-append hook for side effects. This design ensures debuggability and allows state to be rebuilt without re-running expensive operations like LLM calls. A key innovation is the ability to deploy an agent by simply appending a 'dynamic worker configured' event—containing JavaScript code for a processor—to an event stream, eliminating the need for servers or complex deployment pipelines. This enables a distributed and composable ecosystem where processors from different authors can collaborate on a single stream.

Apr 08, 2026

From Chaos to Choreography: Multi-Agent Orchestration Patterns That Actually Work — Sandipan Bhaumik

Sandipan Bhaumik from Databricks explains that scaling from one to many AI agents is a distributed systems problem, not an AI one. He details common architectural anti-patterns like shared mutable state that cause race conditions and silent failures. The talk provides a practical framework based on distributed systems engineering, covering crucial patterns like choreography vs. orchestration, immutable state management with versioning, data contracts, and failure recovery using circuit breakers and compensation (Saga) patterns. Bhaumik illustrates how to build a robust, production-grade multi-agent architecture using tools like Databricks, LangGraph, and MLflow.

Apr 02, 2026

Learning API Styles • Lukasz Dynowski & Sam Newman • GOTO 2026

This GOTO Book Club episode features an in-depth conversation between Sam Newman and Lukasz Dynowski, co-author of "Learning API Styles," exploring the foundational network layer of APIs, various API styles, critical trade-off decisions, and future trends like WebTransport and gRPC. The discussion emphasizes treating APIs as products, understanding consumer context, and the eight key characteristics of a well-designed API, complemented by a cautionary tale on database access.

Mar 17, 2026

Write Reliable Software with Temporal

Johann Schleier-Smith from Temporal explains Durable Execution, a paradigm for building reliable, long-running applications. He details how Temporal's model of deterministic workflows and stateful activities provides a robust alternative to traditional checkpointing and event-driven architectures, especially for complex, LLM-driven agentic systems.