An introduction to distributed systems through play - building a microservice escape room

Learn distributed system patterns through play! In this workshop we'll build an IoT escape room to explore how to build distributed systems. At each stage, we'll pause and see how to apply the IoT concepts to enterprise system development.

    We'll start with a working minimal implementation of an escape room with microservice puzzles, and see how they fail. From the failures we can see how each of the puzzles can be improved to be made more scalable and fault tolerant. We'll then explore some more advanced distrbuted systems concepts

    This workshop is intended for:

    • Senior developers beginning to take steps into the world of distributed systems
    • Developers interested in learning IoT basics
    • Anyone that wants to learn how to make their existing microservices more scalable and fault tolerant

    What we'll cover:

    • Introducing the escape room puzzles
    • IoT basics, reading and writing
    • Triggering things through REST
    • Where REST breaks down
    • Introducing messaging via RabbitMQ
    • Routing messages
    • Dealing with failures
    • Delayed delivery
    • What further patterns should attendees learn about
    • Let's escape! A full play through of our escape room

    This will give attendees an overview of the basic patterns of distributed systems enabling attendees to see how to transition their current systems to a better distributed systems architecture. Attendees will also get a basic introduction to IoT devices.

    What should you bring?

    This is a Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) workshop. Therefore, attendees are required to bring their own device with the necessary software already installed:

    Either:

    • Arduino IDE, or
    • VS Code with Platform IO add-on installed

    In addition, it may be helpful to have docker with the following docker containers installed:

    • `rabbitmq:3-management`
    • `eclipse-mosquitto`
    William Brander
    Distributed Systems Bricklayer



    A professional geek, William works for Particular Software writing amazing software like NServiceBus. Passionate about the web, he is engaged in a sordid love affair with JavaScript, and spends most of his free time trying to convince others of it’s beauty and elegance.

    When not behind his laptop hacking away, this amateur beer enthusiast can often be found playing boardgames or drinking cold-brew coffee.

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