Distributed Computing
Posted by Jim at January 12th, 2004
Had class tonight.
This is, as always, a good thing. This semester I’m taking the last of three classes in the distributed computing series and the first of the classes in the database series. As a result, I’m probably going to be writing a lot more about distributed computing than databases. Advanced topics in distributed computing are likely to be much more interesting than the basics of database design.
At any rate, tonight was the distributed computing class. We’ll be graded for two things in this class: A project (60%) and readings and discussion (40%).
As you might guess, the project is the main point of the class. We’re supposed to create a distributed system. What’s a distributed system? Basically a system that allows multiple computers to access services.
The internet is one example. Napster is another.
The team I’m on is considering creating a file sharing program. We’re trying to figure out how to make it both scalable and decentralized (ala Gnutella). We’d also like to make it impossible for people to figure out exactly what sort of files your sharing–but that’s something we’ll implement only if we have time.
Trying to figure out the basic system will be complicated enough.
You might look at http://www.iolanguage.com/ — it’s supposed to be very good for distributed computing, and it’s a simple OO scripting language.
Ed Heil
Huh.
I should look into that. I’ve got a feeling I won’t end up using it, but it definitely looks like an interesting language to learn.
Alas, both the other guy in my project and I both know Java pretty well… And that likely means that we’ll use that language.
Still, IO looks like something I should look into for my thesis. I want to do something either in distributed computing, data mining, or possibly usability.
Jim Zoetewey