Backend Development

These backend development guides cover the parts users never see: data, queues and services. Most posts compare two options and explain when each wins.

For example, SQL vs NoSQL and Kafka vs RabbitMQ help with common choices. Also, monolith vs microservices tackles the biggest one. Language series live in the Java, Python and Node.js sections below.

149 articles

06/12/2023 15 min read

How to Call the OpenAI API in Python: Streaming, Retries, and Errors

Use the v1 OpenAI Python client properly: explicit timeouts, bounded retries, specific error handling, streaming output, and tests…
02/12/2023 11 min read

Java Modules (JPMS): Basics and Migration

Executive Summary: Java modules group packages behind a module-info.java file that declares what a module requires, exports, and…
07/11/2023 12 min read

Kafka vs RabbitMQ: Choosing a Message Broker

Kafka vs RabbitMQ decided on model shape, not brand: the durable log versus classic routing, when to use…
04/11/2023 11 min read

Reflection in Java: Inspecting and Modifying Classes at Runtime

Executive Summary: Reflection lets Java code inspect and call classes at runtime through Class, Method, Field, and Constructor…
18/10/2023 12 min read

What’s New in Python 3.12: Features and Upgrade Guide

Python 3.12 brings cleaner generic syntax, unrestricted f-strings, smarter error messages, and the removal of distutils. Here is…
24/09/2023 10 min read

Annotations in Java: Built-in, Custom, and Retention Policies

Executive Summary: Java annotations are types declared with @interface whose elements hold compile-time constants. I cover built-ins like…
13/09/2023 15 min read

FastAPI Tutorial: Build a REST API in Python Step by Step

Build a complete task API with FastAPI: typed request and response models, a database session per request, proper…
05/09/2023 11 min read

Circuit Breaker Pattern: States, Failing Fast, and Bulkheads

The circuit breaker pattern: the three circuit breaker states, failing fast with real fallbacks, and the bulkhead pattern…
02/09/2023 12 min read

Practice: Process and Analyze a CSV with Streams

Executive Summary: This practice project analyzes a sales CSV with Java streams. You model rows as a validated…
12/08/2023 11 min read

NIO.2: Path, Files, and Modern File Handling

Executive Summary: NIO.2’s Path and Files replace string-built file paths and verbose IO code. I’ll cover building and…
09/08/2023 13 min read

Pydantic v2 Tutorial: Data Validation and Settings in Python

Validate untrusted data with typed models, write field and model validators, serialize with model_dump, and load typed settings…
08/07/2023 10 min read

File I/O in Java: Streams, Readers, and Writers

Executive Summary: Classic Java file I/O splits into byte streams for binary data and readers and writers for…
04/07/2023 12 min read

Service Discovery: Registry, Patterns, and Consul vs etcd

Service discovery: how the service registry tracks who is up, the client-side vs server-side discovery comparison, and the…
14/06/2023 12 min read

Pandas Tutorial for Beginners: DataFrames, Filtering, and GroupBy

Load a CSV into a DataFrame, clean it, filter rows, add columns, and summarize with groupby, using a…