Abstract: Special relativity tells us that when information takes time to travel, there is no universal forward march of time. Every system today has significant, unpredictable information delay. Distributed systems theory gives us ways of imposing a global ordering -- but what if we didn't? What if we said, "Hmm, we sold two of this item today. We only have one in stock. Let's say that the customer who paid for expedited shipping came first." Perhaps the clock is a crutch and we can climb farther without it.
With event sourcing and CQRS (Command Query Responsibility Segregation pattern), with languages like Bloom, the inklings of these systems exist. But at a framework level, they can only treat all events as equal. What if our systems played historian, and said: each customer's experience with the UI must remain true. Each report someone has viewed must remain true. All internal events -- let's do what we want with those! Write our own story, optimized for business purposes instead of aligned to a clock that is already fictional. This session explores the possible usefulness of such systems, if they existed. Come prepared to explore beyond what makes sense, and seek out what might be possible.
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