One CS paper every Saturday
Read one paper a week. Learn to read the next one yourself.
Summaries tell you what a paper says. pasttheabstract teaches you how to read it, in three passes: two minutes, fifteen minutes, an evening. Stop after any of them and you still leave with something whole.
Free. Email, push notification, or both. No streaks, no guilt.Pass 1 · the big picture2 minHow can a database spread across continents run transactions in the true order they happened, when no two clocks agree?
Pass 2 · the story15 min
Stop pretending clocks agree. Ask the clock how wrong it might be, and wait out that doubt before a commit shows.
Pass 3 · rebuild and challengeAn evening1Fake TrueTime: give each simulated server a clock up to 5 ms off, and have now() return a window 10 ms wide. Add commit wait to a one-leader store. Check that a commit finished before another starts always gets the smaller stamp, then turn the wait off and watch the check fail.
How every edition works
Three passes, each one deeper
Every edition follows S. Keshav's three-pass method for reading a paper. Do it every week and the method becomes yours.
Pass 1 · 2 minThe big pictureThe one question the paper answers, the five Cs, and the real systems that use it today.
Pass 2 · 15 minThe storyProblem, insight, how it works and the evidence, with a walkthrough of the one figure that matters.
Pass 3 · An eveningRebuild and challengeImplement the core idea, question its assumptions, and compare it with the papers before it.
The reading coach
An expert's margin notes for the real PDF
For every section of the original paper: read it, read it closely, skim it, or skip it for now, plus one line on what to look for. Open a section and the note sits beside the page. The verdicts change with how deep you're going.
Try it on this week's Spanner edition →osdi12-final-16.pdf · guide
1IntroductionReadWhat external consistency promises, and why Bigtable users wanted more.
3TrueTimeRead closelyWhat TT.now() promises, and where the 1 to 7 ms error comes from.
4–4.1.4Concurrency control and timestampsRead closelyThe two commit rules on page 7. Read the short proof in the PDF.
5.3–5.4TrueTime in practice, F1ReadWhether the clock bound holds, and a real workload leaving MySQL.
Editions so far
Papers that still run the world
- Edition 1 · SOSP 2007DynamoHow do you build a storage system that never refuses a write, even while servers crash and networks split?
- Edition 2 · USENIX ATC 2014RaftCan a consensus algorithm be as correct as Paxos, but easy enough that ordinary engineers can understand and implement it correctly?
- Edition 3 · OSDI 2012SpannerHow can a database spread across continents run transactions in the true order they happened, when no two clocks agree?
- Edition 4 · arrives SaturdayTODOTODO
Next Saturday: TODO.
TODO
Install it from your browser for push and offline reading.