Kafka
Apache Kafka.
A tool for handling data streams of events stored in topics.
It looks like Apache Kafka is named after Franz Kafka. An author I’m aware of, but I don’t think I’ve read any of his work. I do know the term kafkaesque which I understand to be the feeling of existing in all consuming, soul crushing hyper-bureaucracy. I wouldn’t say this is a term I would want associated with a technology I use, but I’m sure it has some significant meaning. Hopefully using Kafka won’t be kafkaesque.
Resources
Additionally I watched a ton of videos on Kafka by Tim Bergland of Confluent.
Tim Bergland is quickly becoming a hero of mine. He’s a coder, he’s a teacher, and he wants to lead people into the light of understanding the skills and concepts he knows. Those are all ideals I hold! Similarly, I’ve got a lot of respect for Alvin Alexander. His work on the Scala books, and his own personal site were very beneficial when working with Scala.
Quickstart
The Apache Kafka website leads to a quickstart for installing kafka, running the server, and for interfacing with kafka directly from the terminal. I went through the quickstart, but moved past it almost immediately.
However, if you are learning Kafka, or are unsure on how you might use the tool I highly recommend the quickstart, it definitely helped me gain a better understanding of the tool.