What 'Distributed' Actually Means — CAP Theorem and the Fallacies
Understand the CAP theorem in plain English, consistency vs availability tradeoffs, and the eight fallacies of distributed computing.
When your application runs on a single server, the world is simple. The database is right there. Function calls happen in microseconds. If the server is up, everything works. If it is down, nothing works. Binary. Predictable.
The moment you split your application across multiple servers, multiple services, or multiple data centers, everything changes. Calls that took microseconds now take milliseconds — or seconds, or they time out entirely. Data that was consistent because it lived in one place now has copies that can disagree. A "simple" operation like "decrement the inventory by one" becomes a distributed coordination problem.
Distributed systems are systems where components on different networked computers communicate and coordinate to achieve a common goal. Every cloud applicat
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