Top all-time · #6866
Pierre Zemb
Personal blog · pierrezemb.frsystemsdataprogramming
Pierre Zemb's personal blog at pierrezemb.fr covers systems, data and programming. Since 2020, 12 different Hacker News readers have linked it 17 times, most often “Notes about FoundationDB”. It is still writing: the last post was on 2026-10-27, and you can follow it by feed.
Too few sampled comments (4) to say how often HN recommends it.?
Why HN links it
HN readers cite Pierre Zemb's posts on FoundationDB's deterministic simulation testing as sources in distributed-systems threads. No comment judges the writing itself.
Summarised by Claude from a sample of 4 HN comments that link here. Each comment is marked recommending, critical or neutral (citing without judging); how this works.
Distributed systems, FoundationDB, Rust, and simulation testing, written from production experience.
Most-linked posts?
- Notes about FoundationDB3 people · 4 mentions · first linked 2020-02-22
- Best resources to learn about data and distributed systems2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2022-01-17
- Building Index-Backed Query Plans in DataFusion2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2026-02-25
What Hacker News says?
FoundationDB is awesome testing wise as they have deterministic simulation testing [1] that can simulate distributed and operating system failures. > We wanted FoundationDB to survive failures of machines, networks, disks, clocks, racks, data centers, file systems, etc., so we created a simulation framework closely tied to Flow. By replacing physical interfaces with shims, replacing the main epoll-based run loop wit…
Comment linking /posts/notes-about-foundationdb/
on “Flow: Actor-based language for C++, used by FoundationDB”Submitted Three Years of Nix and NixOS: The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly as a story · 5 points
HN discussionInteresting read. Relatedly, FoundationDB has a distributed testing framework called “Simulation”, which can simulate distributed failures on a single machine (thread!). Quoting from https://pierrezemb.fr/posts/notes-about-foundationdb/ : > We wanted FoundationDB to survive failures of machines, networks, disks, clocks, racks, data centers, file systems, etc., so we created a simulation framework closely tied to Flo…
Comment linking /posts/notes-about-foundationdb/
on “Challenges with distributed systems”Submitted From Arc to Box: One Deref Bound to Rule Them All as a story · 3 points
HN discussionCourses: CMU 15-445: Intro to Database Systems - https://15445.courses.cs.cmu.edu/fall2022/ CMU 15-721: Advanced Database Systems - https://15721.courses.cs.cmu.edu/spring2020/ CMU 15-799: Self-Driving DBMS - https://15799.courses.cs.cmu.edu/spring2022/ DBMS specific: PostgreSQL 14 Internals - https://postgrespro.com/community/books/internals Others: A handy list of distributed system links - https://pierrezemb.fr/p…
Comment linking /posts/distsys-resources/
on “Ask HN: Best resources to learn the intricacies of relational databases”Submitted Thank You, DataFusion: Queries in Rust, Without the Pain as a story · 3 points
HN discussionWhat always fascinated me is they built the simulator for the database first(ish) and relied on it as a first class citizen while building the DB: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4fFDFbi3toc > We wanted FoundationDB to survive failures of machines, networks, disks, clocks, racks, data centers, file systems, etc., so we created a simulation framework closely tied to Flow. By replacing physical interfaces with shims,…
Comment linking /posts/notes-about-foundationdb/
on “FoundationDB: A Distributed Key-Value Store”Submitted Notes about FoundationDB as a story · 3 points
HN discussionSubmitted What I Tell Colleagues About Using LLMs for Engineering as a story · 2 points
HN discussionSubmitted Notes about FoundationDB (2020) as a story · 2 points
HN discussionSubmitted Unlocking Tokio's Hidden Gems: Determinism, Paused Time, and Local Execution as a story · 2 points
HN discussionSubmitted Best resources to learn about data and distributed systems as a story · 2 points
HN discussionSubmitted Explaining FoundationDB's Architecture Through Compartmentalization as a story · 1 points
HN discussionSubmitted Building Index-Backed Query Plans in DataFusion as a story · 1 points
HN discussionSubmitted Building Index-Backed Query Plans in DataFusion as a story · 1 points
HN discussionSubmitted Thank You, DataFusion: Queries in Rust, Without the Pain as a story · 1 points
HN discussionSubmitted What if we embraced simulation-driven development? as a story · 1 points
HN discussion
