Why Kafka Works the Way It Does (And Not Some Other Way)

Studying the ""how"" of Kafka makes you better at using Kafka, but studying its ""whys"" makes you better at so much more. In looking at the tradeoffs behind a system like Kafka, we learn to reason more clearly about distributed systems and to make high-stakes technology adoption decisions more effectively. These are skills we all want to improve!

In this talk, we'll examine trade-offs on which our favorite distributed messaging system takes opinionated positions:

• Whether to store data contiguously or using an index
• How many storage tiers are best?
• Where should metadata live?
• And more.

It's always useful to dissect a modern distributed system with the goal of understanding it better, and it's even better to learn to deeper architectural principles in the process. Come to this talk for a generous helping of both.