Carol's Causal Conundrum: a zine intro to causally ordered message delivery

https://decomposition.al/zines/

Article

  • A hand-drawn zine explaining causal message ordering in distributed systems
  • Uses narrative and diagrams to make a dense CS topic approachable
  • Produced as a collaboration between a researcher and a student

Discussion

  • Commenter praised the zine format for making distributed systems concepts accessible
  • Julia Evans’ wizardzines.com mentioned as a parallel effort in the space
  • Tangent: MQTT’s lack of causal ordering causes subtle bugs in home automation
  • Grammar pedant flagged “a collaboration between [student] and me” misuse

Discuss on HN


Type Link
Added Apr 15, 2026
Modified Apr 15, 2026