Software engineering is a lot less like other kinds of engineering than most of us would like to think. There is an aspect of art to what we do, that is learned not in school but by finding a master and serving an apprenticeship.

Having whacked the hornet's nest once, I take another swing, trying to clarify what I was trying to say originally. Is that a buzzing I hear?

Common wisdom, especially in distributed computing, says that the right approach to all problems is to use a standard. This common wisdom has no basis in fact or history, and is curtailing innovation and rewarding bad behavior in our industry.

If processors and networks are getting faster, why do distributed computing at all? If we just wait, servers will be fast enough to do it all. I don't think so, and give some reasons why...

I'm not really used to this sort of public thinking out loud...but this could be a place to talk about how to deal with really large distributed systems.