I wrote this joke exactly 10 years ago:
There are only two hard problems in distributed systems:
2. Exactly-once delivery
1. Guaranteed order of messages
2. Exactly-once delivery
I originally posted this on Twitter, where it went viral. I felt it deserved a new canonical home. It’s probably the one thing I’ll be remembered for most 🤣
It has been quoted in books, conference talks, academic papers and lectures, and t-shirts. (Feel free to quote it. Please send me a link to your thing, or a hard copy if you can.)
Resources:
- The original on X
- Martin Fowler’s list of predecessors
- Repost on Bluesky
- Repost on Mastodon
- Repost on LinkedIn
A selfie with a gentleman at a conference in Denver CO, who made a t-shirt with my distsys joke.