
Turing Award Winner On Thinking Clearly, Paxos vs Raft, Working With Dijkstra | Leslie Lamport
The Peterman PodShow Notes
I interviewed Leslie Lamport, a Turing Award winner known for his contributions to distributed systems and the inventor of the Paxos algorithm. We walked through the major contributions of his career for the stories behind them and what he learned along the way.
🔸 My keyboard project: https://read.compose.llc/p/our-keyboard-design-reveal
𝗣𝗼𝗱𝗰𝗮𝘀𝘁 𝗹𝗶𝗻𝗸𝘀: • YouTube: https://youtu.be/U719vQz-WFs • Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-peterman-pod/id1777363835 • Transcript: https://www.developing.dev/p/turing-award-winner-on-working-with
𝗘𝗽𝗶𝘀𝗼𝗱𝗲 𝗹𝗶𝗻𝗸𝘀:
• Bakery Problem Paper: https://lamport.azurewebsites.net/pubs/bakery.pdf • Time Clocks Paper (most cited): https://lamport.azurewebsites.net/pubs/time-clocks.pdf • The Byzantine Generals Problem Paper: https://lamport.azurewebsites.net/pubs/byz.pdf • The Paxos Algorithm Paper: https://lamport.azurewebsites.net/pubs/lamport-paxos.pdf
𝗧𝗶𝗺𝗲𝘀𝘁𝗮𝗺𝗽𝘀: 00:00:00 - Intro 00:01:25 - The Bakery Algorithm 00:08:28 - Experiences with Dijkstra 00:14:44 - His most cited paper 00:23:26 - The "Byzantine Generals" problem 00:38:05 - The Paxos Algorithm 00:46:57 - Paxos vs Raft Algorithm 00:51:26 - Building LaTeX 00:54:45 - Why writing improves your thinking 01:00:21 - Why he wasn't an academic 01:02:08 - Grand theory of concurrency 01:07:25 - Why he doesn't think he's smart 01:09:07 - Advice for his younger self 01:09:44 - Outro
𝗪𝗵𝗲𝗿𝗲 𝘁𝗼 𝗳𝗶𝗻𝗱 𝗟𝗲𝘀𝗹𝗶𝗲:
• His works: https://lamport.azurewebsites.net/pubs/pubs.html
𝗪𝗵𝗲𝗿𝗲 𝘁𝗼 𝗳𝗶𝗻𝗱 𝗥𝘆𝗮𝗻:
• Newsletter: https://www.developing.dev/ • X/Twitter: https://x.com/ryanlpeterman • LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ryanlpeterman/ • Threads: https://www.threads.com/@ryanlpeterman • Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ryanlpeterman • TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@ryanlpeterman
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