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What does "leader election" mean in programming?
leader election is one of the most common terms in software development. This guide explains what it means, how it is used in practice, and why it matters, with real examples from the developer world.
Definition
A distributed systems algorithm that selects one node among many to act as the coordinator or primary for a given task. Necessary when only one node should perform an action at a time. Common in databases and cluster managers like ZooKeeper and etcd.
Example
"After the primary node crashed, the Raft consensus algorithm ran leader election and chose a new leader in under a second."
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