You Keep Using That Word • Sam Newman • GOTO 2023

Sam Newman clarifies the definitions of synchronous and asynchronous communication in distributed systems and explores their architectural trade-offs.

This presentation was recorded at GOTO Copenhagen 2023. #GOTOcon #GOTOcph gotocph.com Sam Newman - Microservices Expert & Author of "Building Microservices" & "Monolith to Microservices" @SamNewmanWork RESOURCES twitter.com/samnewman linkedin.com/in/samnewman samnewman.io samnewman.io/blog github.com/snewman ABSTRACT What exactly does the word Asynchronous mean? When it comes to distributed computing, one of the perennial topics comes down to how different services should communicate. Working out the relative merits of specific technical approaches can become a complex affair however, so we often reach for categorisation to simplify our work. Often, the discussion around inter-process communication hinges on what on the face of it seems to be a simple decision: Synchronous or Asynchronous. Just saying “we’re cloud native!” isn’t enough if you actually want to get anywhere, unless your goal is simply to dump loads of money into the hands of tech vendors and consultants. Unfortunately, it turns out that this is far from a simple assessment of what approach is best. Aside from many nuances around this topic, the main issue is that it seems that people can’t even agree on what asynchronous means! Is it non-blocking clients? Message-broker based communication? Does only inbox-based message passing apply? In this talk, we’ll explore the meaning of asynchronous in the context of distributed systems, and show that using the same word in ever-so slightly different contexts causes a huge amount of confusion. [...] TIMECODES 00:00 Intro 03:10 Synchronous vs asynchronous 09:57 What I found might shock you! 11:28 Reactive manifesto 15:06 Blocking calls 27:04 Broker-based request-response 32:39 Competing definitions 34:10 Context 40:05 Sociotechnical system 46:07 Outro Download slides and read the full abstract here: gotocph.com/2023/sessions/2908 RECOMMENDED BOOKS Sam Newman • Monolith to Microservices • amzn.to/2Nml96E Sam Newman • Building Microservices • amzn.to/3dMPbOs Ronnie Mitra & Irakli Nadareishvili • Microservices: Up and Running• amzn.to/3c4HmmL Mitra, Nadareishvili, McLarty & Amundsen • Microservice Architecture • amzn.to/3fVNAb0 twitter.com/GOTOcon linkedin.com/company/goto- instagram.com/goto_con facebook.com/GOTOConferences #Asynchronous #DistributedSystems #CloudNative #SoftwareArchitecture #EDA #EventDrivenArchitecture #ReactiveManifesto #SamNewman CHANNEL MEMBERSHIP BONUS Join this channel to get early access to videos & other perks: youtube.com/channel/UCs_tLP3AiwYKwdUHpltJPuA/join Looking for a unique learning experience? Attend the next GOTO conference near you! Get your ticket at gotopia.tech Sign up for updates and specials at gotopia.tech/newsletter SUBSCRIBE TO OUR CHANNEL - new videos posted almost daily. youtube.com/user/GotoConferences/?sub_confir