The API Decision That Haunts Your Architecture
Series: Backend Engineering Fundamentals · Post 01 of 07 Level: Intermediate · Read time: ~8 min A team I know spent nine months migrating their mobile backend from REST to GraphQL. Two engineers de
Series
Backend Engineering Fundamentals
Backend systems don't fail because of bad code alone — they fail because of bad decisions. This series breaks down the foundational concepts every developer, architect, and engineer needs to build systems that scale, stay secure, and survive production: APIs, caching, security, databases, message queues, scalability, and observability. No fluff, no vendor pitches — just the tradeoffs that actually matter.
Posts in this series
Auth Is Not Security: What Engineers Get Wrong About Protecting APIs
Series: Backend Engineering Fundamentals · Post 03 of 07 Level: Advanced · Read time: ~10 min Most API security bugs aren't cryptography failures. They're design failures. The OWASP API Security Top
SQL or NoSQL? Wrong Question. Here's the Right One.
Series: Backend Engineering Fundamentals · Post 04 of 07 Level: Intermediate · Read time: ~9 min Every few years the industry declares SQL dead, or NoSQL dead, or NewSQL the future. Meanwhile, produ
When to Stop Calling APIs and Start Publishing Events
Series: Backend Engineering Fundamentals · Post 05 of 07 Level: Advanced · Read time: ~10 min Picture a simple checkout flow: user places an order → charge the card → update inventory → send a confi
Scaling: Before You Buy More Servers, Read This
Series: Backend Engineering Fundamentals · Post 06 of 07 Level: Beginner-friendly · Read time: ~8 min "We need to scale" is one of the most expensive sentences in engineering. It triggers infrastruc
You Can't Manage What You Can't See: The Three Pillars of Observability
Series: Backend Engineering Fundamentals · Post 07 of 07 Level: Intermediate · Read time: ~9 min It's 2am. An alert fires. Your service is down. You open your dashboard: CPU is fine, memory is fine.
