RIP USENIX ATC

Oxide and Friends · 15 May 2025 · 1h 24m · Episode 17

What this episode covers

Bryan Cantrill and Adam Leventhal of Oxide Computer Company, joined by Tom Lyon, discuss the discontinuation of the USENIX Annual Technical Conference (ATC) and its historical shift from a practitioner-focused event to an academic one. They recount their experiences at USENIX 2004, including presenting DTrace, meeting Dennis Ritchie, and the conference's low acceptance rate, while critiquing the modern academic publishing model. The conversation highlights the disconnect between academic research and practical systems engineering, citing examples like the failure of simulated data structures and flawed RAID implementations to illustrate the importance of real-world implementation details.

Mentioned

Companies
Oxide Computer Company
Products
DTrace, ZFS
Also
USENIX, Rust, Go, Dennis Ritchie, Rob Pike, Tom Lyon, Bryan Cantrill, Adam Leventhal

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