Linearizability
In plain terms
A strong consistency guarantee where operations appear instantaneous.
Going deeper
Linearizability means every operation appears to take effect atomically at some point between its start and end, so reads always see the latest write. It's the strongest single-object consistency.
Under the hood
Stronger than eventual consistency; requires coordination and trades availability under partitions.
Examples
Strong consistency, distributed registers, etcd, consensus systems, CAP.
Think of it like...
Like a single shared ledger where every entry is instantly visible to all in real time.