Backend Development

Backend development is the server-side work behind an application: APIs, business logic, databases, queues and background jobs. Backend engineers pick languages such as Java, Python, Node.js or C#, decide how data is stored and how services talk to each other, and keep it all fast and correct under load. Most of the hard calls are trade-offs, such as SQL against NoSQL or a monolith against microservices.

177 articles

28/11/2018 13 min read

Building REST API Endpoints in Node.js and Express: Routes, Controllers, and Best Practices

How I structure an Express REST API on Node 10: routes, Joi validation, thin controllers, services and correct…
26/11/2018 1 min read

Start a basic server using express

Express is an amazing framework. We can start running a server by writing only 4 lines of code.…
03/11/2018 12 min read

SQL vs NoSQL: Choosing a Data Model Under Real Constraints

SQL vs NoSQL decided on real constraints: what relational databases guarantee, the types of nosql databases, when to…
01/09/2018 12 min read

Database Indexing: How Indexes Speed Up Reads (and Cost Writes)

How do database indexes work: the b tree index, clustered vs non clustered indexes, composite index column order,…
30/06/2018 7 min read

Sharding vs Replication: Which One Do You Need?

Sharding vs replication compared: what each mechanism scales, when replication is enough, when to shard, and why production…
28/04/2018 12 min read

Database Sharding: Partitioning Strategies, Hot Keys, and Rebalancing

Database sharding explained: range, hash, directory, and geographic strategies, choosing a shard key, hot shards, cross-shard queries, and…
24/02/2018 13 min read

Database Replication: Leader-Follower, Multi-Leader, and Leaderless

Database replication explained: leader-follower, multi-leader, and leaderless topologies, synchronous vs asynchronous trade-offs, replication lag, and the failover failure…
19/08/2017 5 min read

Mandatory Security For Your New WordPress Site

So, you’ve just launched your shiny new WordPress website. The theme is perfect, the copy is polished, and…
01/04/2016 9 min read

API Gateway in System Design: The Front Door of Microservices

What an API gateway does (routing, authentication, rate limits, transformation) how it differs from a reverse proxy and…