Distributed Systems

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.