Ten Hundred Words Of Science

Link: http://splasho.com/upgoer5/

Goal: use the ten hundred most common words in English to describe a complicated concept.

ZeroMQ

Original description from ZeroMQ:

"ZeroMQ in a Hundred Words"

ZeroMQ (also known as ØMQ, 0MQ, or zmq) looks like an embeddable networking library but acts like a concurrency framework. It gives you sockets that carry atomic messages across various transports like in-process, inter-process, TCP, and multicast. You can connect sockets N-to-N with patterns like fan-out, pub-sub, task distribution, and request-reply. It's fast enough to be the fabric for clustered products. Its asynchronous I/O model gives you scalable multicore applications, built as asynchronous message-processing tasks. It has a score of language APIs and runs on most operating systems. ZeroMQ is from iMatix and is LGPLv3 open source.

Now translate that using the most common ten hundred words.

First crack:

ZeroMQ is a set of steps for a computer to take, so that when there are many computers doing those steps, they will do it fast and without getting in each other's way. When the computer does the steps, it becomes a worker. Each worker wears different worker clothes, and carries around numbers wrapped in different number clothes, and the clothes are how computers can do things fast without getting in each other's way. You can have as many computers as you would like. Each computer can act on its own or it can talk to others, it can listen or it can talk, it can share or it can hide, it can ask or it can answer. ZeroMQ is so fast, it can be right in the middle of a whole lot of busy end points.