Backend from first principles - 21.1. Backend Scaling and Performance Engineering: Part-1

The Part-1 of a comprehensive guide to scaling and performance for backend engineers. We cover: - Latency & Percentiles (P50, P90, P99) - Throughput & Utilization - Finding & Fixing Bottlenecks - Database Performance (N+1, Indexes, Connection Pooling) - Caching Strategies & Patterns - Vertical vs Horizontal Scaling Timestamps: 0:00 Introduction 1:50 What is Latency? 5:25 Why Averages Are Misleading 8:00 Percentiles: P50, P90, P99 14:50 Throughput Explained 17:55 Utilization & The Latency Curve 28:55 Finding Bottlenecks: Measure, Don't Guess 36:40 Profiling & Distributed Tracing 42:55 The N+1 Query Problem 53:55 Database Indexes Deep Dive 1:07:20 Connection Pooling (Internal vs External) 1:17:35 Caching Strategies & Invalidation 1:31:00 Cache Hit Ratio 1:33:40 Vertical Scaling (Scaling Up) 1:40:00 Horizontal Scaling (Scaling Out) Join the Discord community: https://discord.gg/NXuybNcvVH #backend #nodejs #golang #softwareengineering Nerd out about the history of technologies here https://www.fascinatingtechhistory.xyz/