Multiple Layers of Caching

I purchased a domain, backendology.com! Check out this same blog post there: https://backendology.com/2018/08/27/multiple-layers-caching/ Caching is one of my favorite topics in technology. I've been fortunate enough to approach this problem from both a hardware and software perspective. This blog post will cover some of the basics of caching, yet focus on the importance of having...

Microservices: Are We Making a Huge Mistake?

I purchased a domain, backendology.com! Check out this same blog post there: http://backendology.com/2018/08/21/microservices-huge-mistake/ There is a clear trend in the software industry moving away from large, monolithic systems to fine-grained services known as "microservices." While compelling, microservices introduce their own set of challenges and fallacies. This post considers the benefits and drawbacks of a microservices...

My Experience Using Hugo

Disclaimer: this blog post is somewhat off topic in that it focuses on blogging more than backend software development. I think you will find this post informative if you have any interest in blogging, static site generation, or Go. This post starts with a full example of using Hugo to create a simple blog. It...

Lessons From Adopting Go at Qualtrics

Back in September 2017, I teamed up with a coworker to give a presentation for the Utah Golang User Group. We chose to share the lessons we had learned as we adopted and scaled Go as one of the core programming languages at Qualtrics. Our intended audience was companies and developers who were interested in...

Top 10 Books for New Software Engineers

I'm excited to share my top ten list of books new Software Engineers should invest in reading! These books have proved foundational in helping me transition from student to developer and deepen my skills. First, a disclaimer: there are some great books missing from this list because I haven't read them yet. I want this...

Breaking Down Abstractions: Database Indexes

In the introduction to this blog, I mentioned that I love breaking down abstractions to understand what makes them tick. This blog post is the first of many that will break down a fascinating abstraction. Abstraction Database indexes provide the abstraction of performant queries with the cost of some overhead during writes and additional storage...

What This Blog is All About

"Backended"? There are only two hard things in Computer Science: cache invalidation and naming things (Phil Karlton). Or, my favorite variant: There are only two hard things in Computer Science: cache invalidation, naming things, and off by one errors (Unknown) Naming is hard. Backended isn't a real word. "Back ended" and its hyphened form "back-ended"...

Yet Another Software Blog

Welcome! This is the first post of my blog. If you’re reading this, you’re either arriving right on the ground floor or somehow I kept up with my goal to have an updated blog and you're reading an older post. Either way, I’ll consider you a founder. I hope that you can find value in...