Friendly Intro To the CAP Theorem (Consistency vs Availability vs Partition Tolerance)

The CAP theorem is a useful principle in distributed systems that illustrates some of the difficult tradeoffs that distributed systems have to make. However, it has somehow solidified itself as the E = MC^2 of the software engineering world: a cool piece of jargon that many people know and rattle off during interviews to sound smart and knowledgeable, even when it’s not relevant. As it turns out, the CAP theorem is not an incredibly advanced concept that only the most engineers can comprehend. It’s fairly intuitive, and I’ll explain why in this video. Let’s go!

00:00 Intro
00:31 C, A, and P
00:48 Consistency
01:51 Availability
02:17 Partition Tolerance
02:54 C, A, and P Recap
03:13 The CAP Theorem
03:40 C & A
04:08 One Must Choose Between C and A
04:42 Why Must One Choose?
05:38 Recap