How Third Grade Arithmetic Can Sink Your Software Architecture
Published by Matt Stine
Do you really understand single points of failure?
A Single Point of Failure (SPOF) will cause an entire system to fail, even if it’s the only broken component. The Power of Multiplying By Zero is a mental model we can use to better understand SPOFs. Consider these two expressions:
865309 x 42 x 1984 x 221 x 0
865309 + 42 + 1984 + 221 + 0
Assuming you have beyond a third-grade education (or your country’s equivalent), the second expression may take you a moment, but the first expression should evaluate itself.