As distributed systems builders it is in our best interest to understand the theory underpinning our work and to learn from the research in our field. For many years, academic papers have provied the practitioner with an avenue to accomplish these goals, providing solutions to hard problems and defining the limits of what is possible. But implementing the system or algorithm described in a paper or applying those theoretical limits to an implementation is not a straightforward process. It requires more than an understanding of what was read.

In this talk we will discuss an arsenal of tools to improve our contextual awareness when evaluating papers and strategies that help us when problems arise during implementation.