Hello everyone!
Since some of us need to get the ball rolling sooner rather than later,
I have written up a long list of tasks that need to be done at:
https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Facebook_Open_Academy/Cron
where those of you who have begun their academic years can already
contribute. Of particular importance at this stage of the project is
the research aspects.
We need to collectively research what elements already exist in the
direction of a distributed cron alternative, that means:
* Find what exists in distributed scheduling in general
* Find what libraries exist for Python for task distribution, peer
server management, etc which can be leveraged for our project.
Everyone needs to start collecting that information and taking notes;
please survey the field of relevant software or papers, and enumerate
them on the wiki page noted above. If you find something promising,
note it down alongside your evaluation. When you start examining a
particular bit of software or paper, note it down on the wiki page so
that efforts are not duplicated needlessly.
Pay attention to research papers in particular; the problem of reliable
distributed computing is well known and heavily researched -- there is
lots of knowledge to tap into there!
Finding something that turns out to be useless is also valuable
information; your research notes should include /why/ it's unsuitable
and what lessons we can learn from it.
On that same wiki page is a list of (preliminary) architectural
decisions that need to be taken. Many will reveal themselves as the
design is being refined. Now the the /best/ time to start making those
decision in light of the information being found in the research section.
-- Marc