MapReduce

MapReduce shows how a constrained programming model can hide distribution, retries, shuffling, and locality. Read it for the system-design lesson that an API can be an operational strategy.

Reading focus: How map, shuffle, and reduce decompose large batch jobs. Why deterministic tasks make retries and straggler handling simpler. How data locality and scheduling become part of the abstraction.

OSDI 2004. Dean and Ghemawat. 40 min read, easy difficulty.