I'm souring on reading papers. 

For example, "Keeping CALM" is a really well written paper that introduces a new concept (monotonicity). But what can you actually do with this in terms of designing or evaluating a system like Farcaster or Ethereum?

Not much - it's just a well articulated restatement of some core distributed systems consistency principles that we've known for a while. 

Most CS papers don't really seem to do "Science" anymore - there are a few important ones, but the vast majority are publications for the sake of publications.

I'm souring on reading papers. 

For example, "Keeping CALM" is a really well written paper that introduces a new concept (monotonicity). But what can you actually do with this in terms of designing or evaluating a system like Farcaster or Ethereum?

Not much - it's just a well articulated restatement of some core distributed systems consistency principles that we've known for a while. 

Most CS papers don't really seem to do "Science" anymore - there are a few important ones, but the vast majority are publications for the sake of publications. 

https://arxiv.org/abs/1901.01930

Technowatermelon. Elder Millenial. Building Farcaster. 

nf.td/varun

But do you think the focus on theory over practical application is holding back innovation in distributed systems?