I think this field is mature, as far as it goes, so you'll be in the weeds by the time you get to the frontier. Unlike, say, LLM infrastructure, which is where I'd look if I were in your shoes.

Thanks for the insight!

You’re absolutely right—the distributed KV/object storage space is very mature, and I don’t expect to “out-innovate” the current leaders. My main goal is to learn by reimplementing challenging systems from (almost) scratch and to deeply understand how these pieces work behind the scenes.

LLM infra is definitely a hot frontier—makes sense that it’s where lots of cutting-edge work is happening. Maybe someday I’ll try my hand at that too. For now, I want to really master the fundamentals!

Thanks again for your perspective—it’s helpful to think about where the opportunities (and weeds!) are.