In this lecture, Zach delves into the intricacies of Kafka, highlighting its versatility beyond data engineering. He explains how Kafka functions, its categorization of data lines, and its applications in various industries, including notifications and sockets. He touches on the differences between Kafka, Flink, and Spark Streaming, emphasizing the importance of real-time processing and the considerations when choosing between streaming and batch pipelines. [Recorded on June 5th, 2024]