[hypewatch]

It’s no coincidence! Apache Kafka is named after Franz Kafka. From Wikipedia:

> Jay Kreps chose to name the software after the author Franz Kafka because it is "a system optimized for writing", and he liked Kafka's work.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apache_Kafka

[arjunnarayan]

Jay Kreps is an extremely well read man; the reference is surely ironic. Enterprise middleware, after all, is and always has been a bureaucratic rigmarole.

The nightmare has existed since the first ETL job was written, but by democratizing pub/sub access throughout companies, we can't help but be horrified by what we see going on in the dataplane. Apache Kafka, rather than creating this nightmare, brings light to it, just as Franz Kafka's literature brought light to the absurdity of life under evil bureaucracies.

Now he can't quite say this outright lest he offend some set of his customers who have to live in this reality, so we have that vague quote about "he's one of my favorite writers", but surely we can take a direct literary reference as a wink and a nod and read between the lines?

[oblio]

> evil bureaucracies

I think Kafka's point is that those bureaucracies are not evil, just uncaring. Which makes the end results even more sinister, as you get crushed through no clear malicious act.

[greatdesc]

This is a great description. Sums up well my thoughts about Kafka but that I hadn't verbalised.

[triangleman]

But, but, the irony! https://qr.ae/pNKM3k

[tome]

> Few of Kafka's works were published during his lifetime ... Kafka instructed his executor and friend Max Brod to destroy his unfinished works ... but Brod ignored these instructions.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Franz_Kafka

[jacobush]

Damn, I thought did his friend execute him?! That is very Kafka-esque. But no, his friend was the executor of Kafkas' last will.

[geodel]

In my experience Apache Kafka is indeed a real world incarnation of that Kafkaesque bureaucratic rigmarole that he described in his novel 'The Castle'.