Reading time: about 10 minutes The problem Kafka solves Picture a small online store. A customer clicks “Place Order,” and the Order service has to: The first version is usually the obvious one: the Order service calls each of these directly. It works, until the email provider has a slow afternoon and checkout starts timing … Read more
When you type a few characters into a search box and suggestions immediately appear, it is easy to assume that the application is simply filtering a list of strings. For a small dataset, that might actually be enough. But imagine a system containing millions of products, search queries, usernames, locations, commands, or other terms. Now … Read more
Imagine you are running a backend service that has thousands of tasks waiting to be processed. Some tasks are normal. Some are urgent. Some have been waiting for a long time. Some consume significantly more CPU than others. Now suppose your worker has capacity to process only one task at a time. Which task should … Read more
If you have worked on a backend application, chances are you have used a hash table even if you didn’t explicitly think about it. A Dictionary<TKey, TValue> in C# is a hash table. A cache backed by Redis relies heavily on key-based lookup. A database index is designed around the same broader idea: make finding … Read more
Want to solve array problems in O(n) instead of O(n²)? The Two Pointer technique is one of the first optimization patterns every software engineer should master. Whether you’re preparing for any interview Google, Microsoft, Amazon, or any product-based company, understanding the Two Pointer technique can turn brute-force solutions into elegant, interview-winning algorithms. In this guide, … Read more
A Friendly Guide for Beginners and Intermediate Developers 👋 Hey there, fellow developer! Ever felt like you’re reinventing the wheel every time you write code? Or maybe you’ve looked at a senior developer’s code and wondered, “How did they know to structure it that way?” The secret sauce? Design Patterns! Let’s break this down in a … Read more
In modern web application development, scalability and efficient resource utilization are key. ASP.NET Core gives us powerful tools to build high-throughput servers, and one of the most impactful features for performance is asynchronous programming using async and await. In this article, we will explore how async/await works specifically with the ThreadPool in ASP.NET Core and … Read more