Introduction to Distributed Computing

The YouTube video “Cluster Computing and MapReduce Lecture 1” from Google is a good first introduction to the problems of distributed computing. While you do need to have a basic understanding of at least one programming language, Aaron Kimball is an unusually clear teacher.

In this talk, Kimball covers

the need for mutually exclusive access to shared resources (variables, in this case),

the need for synchronization so that access to shared resources occurs in the right order,

how different processes, working on a common problem, communicate with each other using pipes and sockets, and

what IP (Internet Protocol) and TCP (Transmission Control Protocol) are, and why we need them when computers communicate across the internet.