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Having never actually used this platform before, does anybody know why they named it Kafka, with all the horrible meanings?

Per Wiktionary, Kafkaesque: [1]

1. "Marked by a senseless, disorienting, often menacing complexity."

2. "Marked by surreal distortion and often a sense of looming danger."

3. "In the manner of something written by Franz Kafka." (like the software language was written by Franz Kafka)

Example: Metamorphosis Intro: "One morning, when Gregor Samsa woke from troubled dreams, he found himself transformed in his bed into a horrible vermin. He lay on his armour-like back, and if he lifted his head a little he could see his brown belly, slightly domed and divided by arches into stiff sections. The bedding was hardly able to cover it and seemed ready to slide off any moment. His many legs, pitifully thin compared with the size of the rest of him, waved about helplessly as he looked." [2]

[1] Wiktionary, Kafkaesque: https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Kafkaesque

[2] Gutenberg, Metamorphosis: https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/5200/pg5200.txt



It was named so based on the Idea is that like the author (who the term "Kafkesque" is coined after), Apache Kafka is a prolific writer.


Kafka wrote a lot, and destroyed most of what he wrote.

Seems like a good name for a high-volume distributed log that deletes based on retention, not after consumption.


Jay Kreps liked Kafka’s writing.



Nominative determinism.




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