Docker for Backend Engineers Who Aren't DevOps
Most backend engineers learn Docker by copying a Dockerfile from the internet, running it locally, and moving on. That works until it doesn't — images that are 2GB when they should be 200MB, builds th
#backend-engineering
Posts tagged #backend-engineering
Testing AI-Dependent Code: Mocking LLMs, Evaluating Outputs, and Avoiding Flaky Tests
The test checked whether the extracted invoice total matched the expected value. It passed nine times out of ten. On the tenth run, the model formatted the number differently — "1,234.56" instead of "
Redis Patterns Every Backend Engineer Should Know
Redis gets reached for because it's fast. That's often the wrong reason. Speed isn't a pattern — it's a property. Using Redis correctly means understanding what each pattern is actually good at and, j
When Terraform Gets Messy: Refactoring, Imports, and State Surgery
S01E06 of Terraform for Application Engineers
Terraform CI/CD: Plan on PR, Apply on Merge
S01E05 of Terraform for Application Engineers
Structuring OpenAI and Gemini Calls in FastAPI: Prompts, Fallbacks, and Retries
The fallback was supposed to be temporary. When the OpenAI API was unavailable, the service would return the last cached result for that user rather than failing the request. Clean degraded experience
