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Ice Cream and Distributed Systems (brooker.co.za)
90 points by mjb on Oct 25, 2014 | hide | past | favorite | 5 comments



As someone who thoroughly enjoys ice cream, and distributed systems, this post was really enjoyable to me.

Is there a name for this kind of prose that intermingles technical facts, math, and narrative? I find that it does resonate with a specific kind of audience. On the other hand, one can overdo it, and make their work cryptic beyond recognition (http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/um/people/lamport/pubs/l...).


I think the technical term you're looking for is "a good story".


I have heard the term "business novel" about the books written by Eliyahu Goldratt.


It took me an embarrassingly long time to figure out this was not a true history of his ice cream addiction.


I found this article obtuse in that, at least for me, the metaphor clouds the individual notions... each arguably relatively simple when presented carefully and considered in strict isolation.




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