Optimizing for Understanding

The Raft consensus algorithm, which I ran into via Cockroach, has an interesting design constraint:

After struggling with Paxos ourselves, we set out to find a new consensus algorithm that could provide a better foundation for system building and education. Our approach was unusual in that our primary goal was understandability: could we define a consensus algorithm for practical systems and describe it in a way that is significantly easier to learn than Paxos? Furthermore, we wanted the algorithm to facilitate the development of intuitions that are essential for system builders. It was important not just for the algorithm to work, but for it to be obvious why it works.

(From In Search of an Understandable Consensus Algorithm (Extended Version) by Diego Ongaro and John Ousterhout).

Tagged with software , algorithms