The theoretical foundations of distributed systems provide crucial intellectual scaffolding, but they often paint a deceptively clean picture of system behavior and failure.

In production, the challenges engineers encounter are fundamentally different from the idealized textbook scenarios. We struggle not with elegant theoretical dilemmas, but with the subtle, messy, and often unexpected operational realities.

This session dives deep into the unwritten realities of distributed systems engineering, comparing the clean, predictable problems we study with the complex, real-world issues.

Attendees will leave with practical war stories, debugging strategies, and a clearer understanding of what it takes to build and operate resilient systems at scale.

Target audience: Software Engineers
Preferred session duration: 45 - 60 minutes