Martin Kleppmann

Yeah, it had been clear for a couple of years that a second edition was needed just because the first edition was getting a bit dated.

There were changes in technology that just hadn't been reflected in the first edition.

So I wanted to update it.

But, you know, I now have an academic job.

I'm actually like doing research and teaching is my main thing.

And

updating the book is just a sort of sideline business on the side in some sense so it actually took quite a while to make progress with that because I was always doing it alongside other projects and essentially back to that context switching problem that I had while writing the first edition but just now with an academic job that I didn't want to just drop because I actually quite enjoy it.

Initially then I made very slow progress with the second edition and all

Also, I kind of realized that I had slightly lost touch with current industry practices because, you know, I'd switched over to the academic side.

I'd gone much deeper on the theory, but I was no longer up to speed on like what people were doing with, say, data lakes or things like that.

So then at some point, I remembered Chris Riccomini, an old colleague from LinkedIn.

I had worked with him.

on the stream processing stuff.

Exactly.

Wow, what a small world.

Yeah, and I had read Chris's book, The Missing Readme, and thought, oh, he's a great writer.

And I had worked with him as a software engineer and found him a great colleague.

And also he had been writing this newsletter called Materialized View on latest trends in data systems, essentially.

and become a startup investor in that space.

And so at some point I thought, well, actually I have to get in touch with Chris and ask him whether he wants to help out with the second edition.