Distributed Systems

Timeout fundamentals for software: why timeouts exist, connection vs read vs write, choosing values, and avoiding cascading failures in distributed systems.

Exponential backoff is a retry strategy that increases wait time between attempts. Learn why it exists, how it works, and when to combine it with jitter.

Jitter is timing variation that creates bursts and tail latency. Understand measured jitter, backoff jitter, and why it matters in retries.

Retry storm: when retries multiply load and turn partial failures into outages. Learn how they happen, how to detect them, and how to prevent them.

Thundering herd: when many clients do the same work at once and overload a dependency. Understand why it happens, what it looks like, and how to reduce risk.

Backpressure: a system’s way of saying “slow down” before overload turns into timeouts and retries. Understand why it matters and what signals it uses.

Load shedding rejects work during overload so systems stay usable. Learn why it matters, what it looks like, and how it prevents retry storms.

Master the core concepts of distributed systems that power modern applications. Learn about consistency, fault tolerance, scalability patterns, and architectural principles that separate toy projects from production-ready systems.