http://www.infoq.com/presentations/LMAX →
Very insightful talk by couple of engineers from LMAX (UK). They build high-throughput, low-latency financial systems in Java. They go to extreme lengths to avoid using locks by relying on CAS+memory-barriers from JMM for concurrency control and avoiding cache misses. Read the comments below the video on the InfoQ page as well.
They emphasize on the importance of having “mechanical sympathy” - knowing and appreciating how things work in the layers underneath and taking advantage of that know-how for good (apparently that’s what the motor racing world calls it). This is pretty much similar to the “full-stack programmer” idea in the previous post by the Facebook engineer.
