What would you recommend for someone who wants to specialize in distributed systems/computing?

[gdhuper]

Hi Jason, in one of the posts you mentioned that you had a knack for distributed systems. For someone who wants to specialize in distributed/large scale systems, what would you recommend?
Thanks

[jasoncwarner]

There's a lot to learn, tbh. Most of the modern components have evolved into entire open source projects or products. And they many are amazing and can be awesome to use, though there is a lot of sprawl and complexity. It's not very approachable, particularly for learning.

If I could offer only one singular thing, it would be to study and learn Erlang/OTP. Why? Because the core concepts that Erlang/OTP offer are the same core concepts you will need in distributed systems thought Erlang/OTP offers it at the language/runtime level whereas the modern infra is where it is happening now.

But, knowing the concepts helps you navigate the new landscape and it does it in a much more approachable way than having to learn the entire cloud native foundation landscape before you begin.

After you have this basis, you can evolve it into learning about Phoenix if you want to go webapps etc etc.

Or you can start picking off concepts from Erlang/OTP and figuring out the various OSS projects that specialize in those concepts.

Or you might just use Erlang exclusively. It's a super niche language, unfortunately, that is also one of the most powerful tools our industry has. I find it really sad that it doesn't have more adoption though I do understand why.

Good luck!

[BenEmdon]

I find it really sad that it doesn't have more adoption though I do understand why.

Why do you think Erlang/OTP hasn't received a lot of adoption?

[jasoncwarner]

Likey because of Erlang syntax. If it had looked more like C in the early 2000s, I wonder if it would have taken more of a foothold when many were starting to create larger systems.

That said, I also expected more people to use Elixir given the familiar syntax. It’s got some use but not as much as I would have thought.

Still, it’s worth learning if only for the concepts. I might not know modern JavaScript as deeply as many but I for sure know most of the concepts they have or will have in a few years because I know Erlang/OTP. It was far ahead of its time.