Not exactly related to the article.. But, James's blog is a gold mine for anyone who hasn't been there before. He is one of the guys who is making AWS possible behind the scenes. There are also some cool youtube videos if you search around [1, 2], where he goes into the technical details of the inner working of AWS, and his deep technical knowledge and passion shine.
Imo, James Hamilton is the single most important person in AWS engineering. That's saying a lot since AWS isn't short of some amazing talent right now, esp at the top rungs of various engineering orgs.
I think he's responsible for the very fundamental underpinnings of what AWS does at the infrastructure-level, without which the service owners at AWS would be utterly lost, I feel.
Jame's infectious passion, his religious dedication to his craft... plus there's just so much wisdom in one person that it's ridiculous.
I remember reading about the concept of utility computing in the late 90's, and thinking it was such an amazing concept but seems like one of those that was "always 5 years away". But then it grew up around us slowly enough I barely noticed it as something revolutionary, yet fast enough that today's landscape of infrastructure build outs looks vastly different than just a few years ago.
Microsoft Research pretty much work on bleeding edge tech, as well and publish about some of their research pretty regularly. Here's a staring point to help anyone interested find relevant publications: https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/research-area/syste...
James should find a better host for his blog, the loading time is abysmal. Presumably because of the comments section. (Which is actually interesting!)
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uj7Ting6Ckk
[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aS-FI4eTods