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Understanding Kafka with Factorio (2019)

by pul on 7/13/23, 3:00 PM with 109 comments

  • by haswell on 7/13/23, 8:06 PM

    I recently started playing Factorio, and I kept thinking that this is what "low code" integration/automation tools should look like. Developer tooling with extremely clear visuals, obvious dataflow, endless combinations into which the rigidly defined components can be assembled to do exactly what they do.

    As opposed to so many takes on "flow based" programming, which present some imperfect nodal representation of the program, but rarely can the user make sense of what's going on by seeing stuff moving around as the thing executes.

    And by the way, be sure you're ready to sink some time in if you're curious about this game...it's just too good, and I've had to consciously reduce the time I'm spending, because I could just keep optimizing...building...expanding...optimizing...it's built in the shape of the reward center of my brain.

  • by cubefox on 7/13/23, 6:27 PM

    Semi related: Are other people also annoyed by how many projects are using names of completely unrelated famous things? I expected to read some wild association between a game and Franz Kafka, but no, it's about a streaming platform which happens to be named "Kafka". This is getting seriously annoying when you google for some, e.g. historical, term and then your search results are littered by some completely unrelated software/IT project which reuses the name for no reason in particular. "Factorio" is actually an example of how to do better: Just make up your own word!

  • by marginalia_nu on 7/13/23, 4:44 PM

    > Vertical scaling — a bigger, exponentially more expensive server

    This is in practice not true at all. Vertical scaling is typically a sublinear cost increase (up to a point, but that point is a ridiculous beast of a machine), since you're (typically) upgrading just the CPU and/or just the RAM or just the storage; not all of them at once.

    There are instances where you can get nearly 10x the machine for 2x the cost.

  • by dang on 7/13/23, 5:55 PM

    Related:

    Understanding Kafka with Factorio (2019) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29304414 - Nov 2021 (72 comments)

    Understanding Kafka with Factorio - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20362179 - July 2019 (84 comments)

    (Reposts are fine after a year or so; links to past threads are just to satisfy extra-curious readers)

  • by AbraKdabra on 7/13/23, 7:09 PM

    It's always good to se Cracktorio on the frontpage of HN, hopefully someone will make a similar article showing the similarities between Factorio and drugs.

  • by morelisp on 7/13/23, 4:40 PM

    Cute, but over years of explaining it I think any explanation of Kafka that presents it as a queue is bound to leave the reader with more misaligned expectations than when they started (while also making them think they learned something, which can be even more dangerous). To keep the Factorio-esque framing, move the consumers, not the messages.

  • by lakomen on 7/13/23, 10:02 PM

    Idk... maybe it's because I'm self taught and have been coding since the age of 11, but I don't find the indirect approach helpful, the opposite.

    I believe that's why OO is so popular, people who only know the object way of thinking, who have difficulties with the virtual and abstract like OO and condemn the pragmatic approach.

  • by aledalgrande on 7/14/23, 4:19 AM

    > If you don’t have a lot of time to spare, don’t download Factorio.

    Wish I read this months ago. Factorio sucked my life in until I managed to launch that damn ship

  • by henrydark on 7/14/23, 5:15 AM

    Who else was disappointed to find it's Apache Kafka and not Franz Kafka?

  • by not_your_mentat on 7/13/23, 7:08 PM

    And now I think of everything I do in Factorio models.

  • by jrm4 on 7/13/23, 4:53 PM

    I was 100% expecting something about the writer. :)

  • by mavu on 7/13/23, 7:57 PM

    I clicked this and was immeasurably disapointed that the article talks about Apache Kafka, and not the author Kafka and how to understand his work with Factorio.

    That would be a much much better article.

  • by alexleeds on 7/14/23, 1:26 AM

    OK. 3rd repost of the same material. Really?

  • by BSEdlMMldESB on 7/13/23, 4:46 PM

    what about understanding our own imperialistic civilization?

    crash in planet (or new continent?) and proceed to expand while decimating native life?

    in any case, good game.