Best of Backend Development — February 2025

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   Video

   JavaScript Mastery·1y

   Complete Backend Course | Build and Deploy Your First Production-Ready API

   Learn how to build a production-ready subscription management API that handles real users, money, and business logic. The course covers backend development essentials, including database modeling, API authentication with JWTs, API rate limiting with arcjet, and deployment to a VPS server. By the end of the course, you'll understand client-server communication, API structures, and database interactions, enabling you to create scalable and secure backend systems.

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   Article

   Adventures in Nodeland·1y

   Node.js: easy to learn, hard to master - perfect for AI

   Node.js is celebrated for its easy learning curve, flexibility, and speed. However, mastering it for production use, especially in the age of AI-assisted development, requires deep knowledge of operating systems, networking, and memory management. While beginners can quickly start shipping applications, handling production-level traffic and performance demands advanced skills. The gap in Node.js expertise can be mitigated by contributing to open source projects and staying updated with the latest developments in the ecosystem.

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   Article

   The Polymathic Engineer·1y

   Database sharding case study: PostgreSQL

   Notion's engineering team faced significant challenges in scaling their monolithic PostgreSQL database due to rapid user base growth. They decided to implement database sharding, with the Block table and related tables being sharded using Workspace ID as the key. The migration involved a double-write phase and verification to ensure data integrity. Despite some lessons learned, such as the importance of starting early and aiming for zero downtime, the outcome was a more scalable and faster system for Notion's users.

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   Article

   swizec.com·1y

   I was wrong about databases

   The post discusses misconceptions about database performance with arrays and clarifies how PostgreSQL handles wide table rows using TOAST records and tombstones. It emphasizes the importance of measuring performance based on specific data access patterns, noting that modern SSDs make data packing less critical.

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   Article

   Nestjs Developers·1y

   Modulith with NestJS - A Practical Approach to Better Monolithic Applications

   Learn to leverage the NestJS framework to create structured, maintainable, and scalable monolithic back-end applications. This approach minimizes future challenges of migrating to microservices using a modular design inspired by hexagonal architecture. A well-designed monolith serves as a strong foundation for growth, ensuring easier management and scalability.

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   Article

   System Design Codex·1y

   Your Code is Fast, But Your Database is Slow—Now What?

   If your application is slow despite optimized code, the database might be the bottleneck. This issue often arises because database operations like disk access and network calls are slower than in-memory processes. To address this, you must identify bottlenecks using methods like query profiling and monitoring key performance metrics. Optimize queries by adding indexes, avoiding SELECT *, and using joins instead of nested queries. Also consider architectural optimizations such as caching, connection pooling, materialized views, sharding, and read replicas to improve performance and scalability.

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   Video

   freeCodeCamp·1y

   Strapi 5 and Next.js 15 Full Stack Project Course

   Master modern web development by building a fully functional summer camp website using Next.js 15 and Strapi 5. Through hands-on practice, you'll learn to combine Next.js's server components with Strapi's headless CMS capabilities to create dynamic, content-rich websites. This course is ideal for beginners or anyone seeking to streamline their development process with a powerful tech stack. The tutorial covers setting up Next.js, creating content types in Strapi, integrating Figma designs, and dynamically managing website content.

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   Article

   Awesome Go·1y

   Building RAG systems in Go with Ent, Atlas, and pgvector

   Explore how to build a Retrieval Augmented Generation (RAG) system using Go with Ent, Atlas, and pgvector. The tutorial covers setting up a Golang module, defining database schema with Ent, configuring PostgreSQL with Docker, and managing the schema with Atlas. It also includes steps to scaffold a CLI application, load documents into the database, create embeddings using the OpenAI API, and implement a question-asking feature that returns context-aware responses.

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   Article

   Javarevisited·1y

   Spring Transaction Propagation Guide

   Spring transaction propagation controls how transactions flow between service methods using the @Transactional annotation. Key propagation types include REQUIRED, REQUIRES_NEW, and NESTED. Each type serves different use cases: REQUIRED for default, all-or-nothing processes; REQUIRES_NEW for independent actions like logging; and NESTED for partial rollbacks. The guide also discusses transaction isolation levels, best practices, and common pitfalls.

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    Article

    Awesome Go·1y

    Recover panics in all Goroutines you start

    Panics in Go Goroutines can cause server crashes if not properly handled. Implementing a helper function, CatchPanic, for panic recovery ensures that errors are logged and the application continues running. Wrapping all manually created Goroutines with this helper can prevent entire application crashes and assist in diagnosing issues.

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    Article

    Laravel News·1y

    Eloquent Relationship Queries in Laravel with whereRelation

    Laravel's whereRelation method simplifies filtering models based on their relationships' attributes, making queries more readable and maintainable. This feature is useful for complex filters in various applications like e-commerce platforms and content management systems.

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    Video

    Community Picks·1y

    NO SWAGGER? NO PROBLEM! OpenAPI Made Easy in .NET 9

    Starting with .NET 9, Swagger has been removed as the default OpenAPI package. The new approach involves using the Microsoft ASP.NET Core OpenAPI package to create OpenAPI documents. Various UI alternatives such as Swagger UI, Redoc, and Skaler can be integrated into the .NET 9 applications for better API documentation. Detailed guidance on setting up these UI options along with customizing command definitions for API services within .NET Aspire is provided.

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    Article

    Laravel News·1y

    Handling Missing Request Data in Laravel

    Laravel offers methods such as missing() and whenMissing() to effectively manage absent request data. These methods help in handling optional fields and setting default values for them. The post includes sample code demonstrating the use of these methods in a settings update system to enhance code expressiveness and maintainability.

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    Video

    Laravel Daily·1y

    Laravel: Service vs Action Classes Examples #Laravel

    Service classes in Laravel typically encompass a group of methods related to the same Eloquent model, allowing individual or collective method calls. They are used in scenarios like queue jobs and controllers. Action classes generally house single methods like handle or invoke, though multiple methods can exist. Both service and action classes are flexible PHP classes that can be structured in any desired way.

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    Video

    codeHeim·1y

    #75 Golang - Master WebSockets in Go: Build an Echo Server & Client with Coder WebSocket

    Learn how to implement WebSocket communication in Go using the Coder WebSocket package. The post walks through building a simple Echo server and a client to demonstrate full-duplex communication. Highlights include key benefits of the Coder WebSocket library such as simplicity, performance, built-in features, secure defaults, and context-aware handling.

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    Article

    Fullstack Projects·1y

    Introduction to Database Sharding

    Learn about database sharding, a method of horizontal scaling that involves dividing a large table across multiple databases or machines to manage growing data effectively. Unlike vertical scaling which increases capacity of a single machine, horizontal scaling adds new machines to share the load.

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    Article

    Cyber Security·1y

    SQLZoo - learn SQL online

    SQLZoo offers a free online tutorial for learning SQL with a built-in SQL client. It supports MySQL, PostgreSQL, Microsoft SQL, and MariaDB databases.

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    Article

    ByteByteGo·1y

    How Google Spanner Powers Trillions of Rows with 5 Nines Availability

    Google Spanner is a globally distributed, strongly consistent, and highly available database system developed by Google. It combines SQL-based queries with the scalability of NoSQL, ideal for modern high-demand applications. Key features include synchronous replication for data durability, the use of TrueTime for accurate global timestamps, and dynamic sharding for load balancing. Spanner leverages Paxos for managing replication across multiple zones and ensures availability and consistency even during failures. The TrueTime API, using atomic and GPS clocks, provides precise time synchronization crucial for maintaining global consistency.

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