Vector Clock
In plain terms
A method to track causal ordering of events across nodes.
Going deeper
Vector clocks assign each node a counter so distributed systems can determine the causal order of events and detect conflicts. They capture 'happened-before' relationships.
Under the hood
Each node maintains a vector of counters; comparing vectors reveals causality or concurrency.
Examples
Distributed databases, conflict detection, causality, Dynamo, eventual consistency.
Think of it like...
Like everyone keeping a tally of who heard what, so you can reconstruct the order of news.