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    Swizec's articles in the "backend" category

    I aim to write mindblowing emails with real insight into the career and skills of a modern software engineer. "Raw and honest from the heart!" as one reader described them.

    Below are 13 articles filed under backend. Enjoy ❤️

    Why PATCH endpoints matter

    A painful lesson from production that brought several engineers almost to tears: *Please* add PATCH endpoints to your public APIs.
    October 28th, 2022

    You are allowed to invent HTTP status codes

    A fun problem for RESTful APIs: Did you get 404 because your URL is wrong or because the resource wasn't found?
    June 7th, 2022

    What microservices are for

    Microservices are a pain in the ass. They turn every system into a byzantine mess of complexity. But this week ... they saved my butt.
    May 13th, 2022

    Promise.allSettled, a wonderful tool for resilient code

    The pros and cons of different approaches to writing resilient code that handles partial failures
    April 4th, 2022

    pg-mem and jest for smooth integration testing

    The cult of TDD leads you down a dark and stormy path towards brittle code with a false sense of security. But there is a better way. A sweet spot between unit and heavy integration.
    December 21st, 2021

    Better tooling won't fix your API

    RESTful APIs are like Agile – everyone does it differently and if it isn't working, it's your fault for doing it wrong. 🤨
    November 30th, 2021

    How to configure Jest with TypeScript

    Using plain Jest on a TypeScript codebase is kinda rough. No types in tests no thanks. Making Jest and TypeScript work together smoothly is something you do just rarely enough to forget the details. Hope this helps you and future me too ✌️
    October 19th, 2021

    If you can JavaScript, you can backend

    When you think of a backend or server developer, who comes to mind? A wizard of arcane magics. The future belongs to full-stack frontend engineers.
    March 16th, 2021

    In 2020's, what is "frontend"? 🤨

    "He's a frontend guy, is this even a fair question to ask?" The head of engineering was worried about our systems design question …
    August 7th, 2020

    How you can start using GraphQL today without changing the backend

    GraphQL for new projects looks great ... buuuut how do you use it with that old backend cobbled together in Rails over the last bazillion years?
    March 12th, 2020

    REST API best practice in a GraphQL world

    GraphQL is taking the world by storm and it is wonderful. But in the real world, you're still dealing with REST APIs aren't you?
    September 30th, 2019

    TypeScript for serverless lambda backends 👌

    A few months ago I inherited a Kotlin project. It was an unfinished prototype and all I had to do was wrap it up and deploy. Every time I touched the project, it broke. Nothing worked. Wouldn't run on my machine, wouldn't read API requests, couldn't get tests working, if I changed some code I broke it all. That's when I realized learning a new field is super hard
    May 27th, 2019

    My new favourite Javascript trick

    Using returns and callbacks in the same function. Sounds like crazy talk I know, but hear me out, I have good reason. I think.
    June 26th, 2014

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