The Changelog: Software Development, Open Source The era of durable execution (Interview)
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Apr 10, 2025 
Stephan Ewen, Founder and CEO of Restate.dev and former builder of Apache Flink, discusses the future of resilient applications. He dives into idempotency, emphasizing its role in creating reliable software that can withstand failures. The conversation highlights his experiences transitioning from projects to innovative solutions, touching on new advancements in backend processing and durable execution. Ewen also explores the evolution of AI in coding and introduces Restate's capabilities for enhancing state management in distributed systems.
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Resilient Applications
- Resilient applications tolerate infrastructure errors, outages, and programming glitches.
- They handle retries idempotently, ensuring operations aren't duplicated.
Overkill Idempotency
- A bank implemented a crude form of idempotency by limiting wire transfers to one per recipient daily.
- This avoided potential issues from accidental retries but created an unnecessary constraint for users.
Idempotency and Design
- Idempotency, crucial for resilient apps, involves treating repeated requests as the same request.
- Achieving true end-to-end idempotency requires careful design from the start.
