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Distributed systems: videos Hacker News recommends
Distributed systems: consensus, Paxos, Raft, replication, CAP theorem, Kafka, event logs, Erlang/OTP, scaling services across machines, fault tolerance, large-scale architectures at Google, Netflix, Facebook. Below: every video in this topic that at least three HN users linked with real commentary, in at least three different months (66 talks, 5 lectures, 4 interviews), best-scored first, with the comments on each video page.
- 16 HN recommenders 14 months 2019–2024It is HN's favorite pitch for Elixir and the BEAM, credited with convincing many people to adopt them.
- 12 HN recommenders 11 months 2014–2024HN treats it as the canonical talk on simulation testing and a mind-blowing example of how far rigorous testing can go.
- 6 HN recommenders 10 months 2014–2022The go-to talk showing how Erlang let a tiny team run a massive messaging system.
- 9 HN recommenders 9 months 2015–2025Commenters repeatedly cite it as the talk that reframed how they think about caching, derived data and event sourcing.
- 10 HN recommenders 9 months 2013–2025HN recommends it as a key Hickey talk on system design that changes how people think about distributed state and interfaces.
- 9 HN recommenders 9 months 2012–2025The canonical recommendation for learning Go concurrency, praised as entertaining and clarifying when to use channels versus mutexes.
- 3 HN recommenders 7 months 2017–2020Treated as the go-to approachable yet deep primer on CRDTs and collaborative editing, recommended repeatedly in threads on Automerge, local-first software and OT versus CRDT.
- 7 HN recommenders 7 months 2020–2023HN treats it as the best introduction to Unison, with commenters finding hash-addressed immutable code mind-blowing.
- 6 HN recommenders 6 months 2013–2024D Diego Ongaro · lectureRecommended as a clear, lucid way to learn Paxos and Multi-Paxos, ideally alongside the companion Raft video.
- 5 HN recommenders 5 months 2015–2025HN recommends it as the best video introduction to the actor model, straight from its inventor, and revisited it after Hewitt's death.
- 4 HN recommenders 5 months 2013–2024HN regards it as one of the best technical talks, a deep and clear walkthrough of scalable lock-free hash tables built on compare-and-swap.
- 6 HN recommenders 5 months 2016–2019Recommended as a fantastic introduction to declarative and Datalog-based distributed systems and failure modeling.
- 5 HN recommenders 5 months 2021–2025M Martin Kleppmann · lectureHN regularly recommends the series as a free, accessible, theory-oriented course on distributed computing that complements his book Designing Data-Intensive Applications.
- 5 HN recommenders 6 months 2020–2025M MIT 6.824: Distributed Systems · lectureRecommended as the standard free course for learning distributed systems from real papers.
- 4 HN recommenders 5 months 2018–2023Recommended for its practical strategy for preserving state on ephemeral containers, and for the live demo.
- 4 HN recommenders 5 months 2023–2025G Groxio · talkHN recommends it as a rare real-world look at a large fault-tolerant Erlang/Elixir system with no downtime in healthcare.
- 5 HN recommenders 5 months 2015–2026HN points people to it as Lamport's own case for thinking and writing a spec before coding, and as an entry point to TLA+.
- 4 HN recommenders 5 months 2015–2022HN recommends it as a fascinating explanation of queues, flow control and overload that applies well beyond Clojure.
- 5 HN recommenders 5 months 2016–2023HN treats Hamilton's annual talks as the best window into how AWS regions and hardware are actually built.
- 4 HN recommenders 5 months 2016–2020C Citus Data · talkHN commenters point to it as a first-hand overview of Heap's Postgres/Citus architecture and its distinctive indexing approach.
- 5 HN recommenders 5 months 2014–2023Recommended as a detailed, candid case study of scaling a real system from zero users to millions.
- 4 HN recommenders 4 months 2022–2025HN considers it one of the best game networking talks, with insights that carry over to distributed systems generally.
- 5 HN recommenders 5 months 2018–2024HN recommends it as a transparent MMO postmortem and as the source of the story that the term 'shard' originated with Ultima Online.
- 1 HN recommenders 4 months 2019–2024HN recommends it as an excellent talk on generalizing deterministic simulation testing, and Antithesis hiring posts link it to explain the work.
- 3 HN recommenders 4 months 2013–2021HN people recommend it as a must-watch for anyone running complex systems, and some rewatch it regularly to remember its principles.
- 3 HN recommenders 3 months 2018–2020Strongly recommended as a clear, accessible survey of the CRDT landscape.
- 3 HN recommenders 4 months 2020–2023Recommended as an approachable introduction to CRDTs and the local-first idea behind apps like Actual.
- 4 HN recommenders 4 months 2019–2020R Reactive Summit · talkHN recommends it as an illuminating, approachable explanation of distributed consensus.
- 4 HN recommenders 4 months 2013–2025D Diego Ongaro · lectureHN commenters recommend it as a clearer introduction to Raft than the paper and as part of a well-designed understandability study.
- 4 HN recommenders 4 months 2013–2023HN points to it as an accessible explanation of microkernel isolation and fault-tolerant design, and as Tanenbaum's answer to performance objections.
- 4 HN recommenders 4 months 2012–2022HN recommends it as a classic look at systems engineering at Google, whose fundamentals have held up well despite its 2010 date.
- 4 HN recommenders 4 months 2013–2026U uncertainyesterday · demoA beloved classic that HN recommends as the quickest way to see why Erlang is special.
- 4 HN recommenders 4 months 2017–2024HN engineers recommend it for its core insight that limiting concurrency naturally yields request-rate limits, and for its link to queueing theory.
- 3 HN recommenders 3 months 2019–2026HN recommends it for getting the inventors of major concurrency models together, disagreements included.
- 3 HN recommenders 3 months 2017–2023E EMPEX Conference · talkRecommended as the best short overview of why the BEAM and Elixir stand apart from other runtimes.
- 3 HN recommenders 3 months 2020–2024M Martin Kleppmann · talkRecommended as an excellent first education on CRDTs and their limits.
- 2 HN recommenders 3 months 2017–2022O OnChain Scaling · talkCited by big-block advocates as evidence that Bitcoin could handle far higher throughput.
- 2 HN recommenders 2 months 2019–2021C CH1LLW4VE · demoHN recommends it as a charming, concise demonstration of what makes Erlang special, from the people who built it.
- 3 HN recommenders 3 months 2012–2020HN points to it as a simple diff-and-patch alternative to operational transforms and CRDTs for collaborative editing.
- 2 HN recommenders 3 months 2016–2022Pointed to as the best source on Phoenix Presence internals and for combining Phoenix with Elm.
- 3 HN recommenders 3 months 2018–2025Recommended as a concise, high-level intro to what TLA+ is and when it helps.
- 3 HN recommenders 3 months 2016–2023Often brought up as an honest account of microservice sprawl, including the fact that nobody at Uber knew exactly how many services existed.
- 2 HN recommenders 2 months 2023N netdevconf · talkRecommended as the thorough case for replacing TCP in datacenters and for Ousterhout's Homa protocol.
- 2 HN recommenders 2 months 2017–2022P Perforce Puppet · talkHN recommends it for Hightower's clear mental models, such as comparing the scheduler to Tetris and explaining why resource limits matter.
- 2 HN recommenders 2 months 2015–2019Pointed to as a rare look at how a tiny engineering team ran WhatsApp's massive scale on FreeBSD and Erlang.
- 2 HN recommenders 2 months 2017–2021D dawsdesign · demoHN treats it as a classic that shows what Erlang was built for: robust, concurrent telecom systems with live upgrades.
- 2 HN recommenders 2 months 2009–2012Pointed to as evidence that Java can do fast, cheap message-passing concurrency, as an alternative to Erlang or Scala actors.
- 2 HN recommenders 2 months 2018–2023Recommended as a compact preview of Kleppmann's data systems material, including from his book on the subject.
- 2 HN recommenders 2 months 2015–2017J Juan Benet · demoHN lists it among the best early resources for learning what IPFS is and does.
- 2 HN recommenders 2 months 2020–2026Cited in decentralization and federation debates as the key talk on the practical challenges, though some found it defeatist.
- 2 HN recommenders 2 months 2014–2020HN points to it as an authoritative overview of AWS infrastructure, including what AZs and regions really mean.
- 2 HN recommenders 2 months 2017–2018F Franklyn · explainerCommenters point to it as a short, high-level overview of how Lightning payment channels work.
- 2 HN recommenders 2 months 2019HN cites it as the authoritative description of Lambda internals and isolation, by the engineers who built it.
- 2 HN recommenders 2 months 2018–2022Recommended as a conceptual rather than code-heavy talk on failure recovery from Erlang's creator.
- 2 HN recommenders 2 months 2023–2025L Linear · talkRecommended whenever local-first software, sync engines and CRDT alternatives come up, as a practical production account.
- 2 HN recommenders 2 months 2021–2025F Fraktio · talkCited as the explanation of how Linear's fast, locally synced UI works.
- 2 HN recommenders 2 months 2008–2013HN recommends it as a rich, concrete look at real-world system design and as evidence of YouTube's early Python stack.
- 2 HN recommenders 2 months 2023Pointed to as the canonical pitch for Erlang's fault-tolerance and self-healing model.
- 2 HN recommenders 2 months 2023–2024M Matrixdotorg · talkHN threads link it as the primary source for Matrix's performance claims and sliding sync improvements.
- 2 HN recommenders 2 months 2018–2023Recommended as an entertaining cautionary talk on microservice failures and Conway's law.
- 2 HN recommenders 2 months 2019–2023It is the go-to reference whenever HN discusses cell-based architecture and outage isolation, as an explanation straight from AWS engineers.
- 2 HN recommenders 2 months 2018–2021Recommended as the protocol designer's own detailed explanation of SCP.
- 2 HN recommenders 2 months 2018–2022HN points to it as an authoritative look at DynamoDB internals and as evidence it is a complex distributed system.
- 1 HN recommenders 1 months 2015–2017O Open Networking Summit · talkHN cites it as a rare public look at Google's internal network design and how it scales to many VMs.
- 1 HN recommenders 1 months 2012–2024HN mostly cites it as evidence that YouTube was built on Python and as background on how it scaled.
- 1 HN recommenders 1 months 2015–2018Mostly cited as a source for details of Cloudflare's architecture, such as LuaJIT-based request inspection and request volumes.
- 1 HN recommenders 1 months 2016–2026D Domain-Driven Design Europe · talkHN commenters cite it in event sourcing threads for Young's views on when to use it, including advice against cross-application event sourcing.
- 1 HN recommenders 1 months 2025L Local-First Conf · talkCited in sync-engine and local-first threads for Kleppmann's argument for a generic, standardised sync protocol or service.
- 1 HN recommenders 1 months 2021–2025HN points to it as insight into how AWS thinks about distributed systems and the difficulty of consensus.
- 1 HN recommenders 1 months 2018–2022Cited as a useful taxonomy for pinning down what an event-driven design actually is.
- 1 HN recommenders 1 months 2013–2015O Open Networking Summit · talkCited as a primary source for Google building its own switches and running OpenFlow in production.
- 1 HN recommenders 1 months 2014–2021Cited in backup and data-loss threads as a rare inside look at Google's backup practices, including its use of tape.
- 1 HN recommenders 1 months 2020–2024Cited as a technical look at how Tesla's VPPs and Autobidder work as distributed systems.
- 1 HN recommenders 1 months 2023–2024T Turing Awardee Clips · interviewHN cites it as a primary source for Lamport's relativity inspiration behind logical clocks in distributed systems threads.
- 1 HN recommenders 1 months 2025–2026HN cites it for insight into Google researchers' views on AI progress and publishing, though one commenter finds the interview weak.
- 1 HN recommenders 1 months 2018–2020C Confluent, an IBM Company · talkHN posts it in Kafka-as-database debates and as an introduction to event logs and CQRS.
- cited 3× 0 months 2020–2021Mentioned as a real-world example that microservices can work at scale, though commenters are lukewarm and unsure it matches what they remember.
- cited 3× 0 months 2023A Anyscale · interviewCited as a source for the fact that OpenAI uses Ray for training, and for Brockman's views on developer speed.
- cited 5× 0 months 2014–2019B BSDTV · talkCited as the primary source for why Netflix uses FreeBSD and UFS rather than ZFS on its CDN boxes, and for its GPL reasoning.
- cited 5× 0 months 2017–2023G Google Workspace · documentaryCited as a documentary look at how Google runs its data centers, though sometimes dismissed as PR.
- cited 3× 0 months 2025Cited as a real-world enterprise Java example, especially for JDK upgrades and ZGC results.
Questions
What is the most recommended distributed systems video on Hacker News?
The Soul of Erlang and Elixir • Sasa Juric • GOTO 2019 by GOTO Conferences: It is HN's favorite pitch for Elixir and the BEAM, credited with convincing many people to adopt them.
How is this distributed systems list ranked?
By HackerTube's score: the number of distinct months in which an HN comment recommended the video, plus half a point for every month with a strong recommendation. One viral thread counts less than steady recommendations over years.
Where do the videos come from?
From every Hacker News comment between 2007 and 2026 that linked a YouTube video, labeled by an AI model as a recommendation, a citation, a joke or a criticism. The list is published by HackerTube under ODC-By 1.0; this edition adds indexable pages and the comment context.
Video list and Hacker News comment labels from HackerTube (prompted by @karpathy), released under ODC-By 1.0, built on the open-index/hacker-news archive. Hacker News data is provided by Y Combinator; comments remain the work of their authors. Video titles, channel names and thumbnails belong to their creators and are shown via YouTube. HackerTube Watch is an unofficial edition. Data export of 2026-10-31.