r/Backend

i know this is very common question to ask how to build connection but i am not asking in generic way like how to build connection i have already cover the basic blocks like connect on linkdin do cold mail to cllg allumnie i even tired on instagram and done cold mailing alot every where its very saturated these day tbh i am from tier 2 college so no luck to connection to allumnie , and i even though attending some tech event in my city to make connection but dont know how that will go so i am asking you dev whats your tried and tested way to make connection to do anything like freelance , job apply , or even to build projects

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Hey everyone,

I’ve been using Node.js for the backend of a few projects. Honestly, it gets the job done, but I find myself getting bored/fatigued by it as the project size increases.

Lately, I’ve been using FastAPI and I’m absolutely loving it. To be fair, I have a strong Python background, so the developer experience just feels right to me. The automatic docs and Pydantic validation feel like magic compared to the boilerplate I usually write in Node.

However, I’ve been reading up on the tradeoffs, and a common sentiment online is that Node.js is significantly better suited for large production projects with hundreds of API endpoints.

I’m trying to separate internet myth from actual industry reality. For those working in production environments:

Project Maintainability: Does FastAPI actually get messy or slow down when you scale up to a massive number of endpoints, or is that just down to poor project structure/architecture?

The Job Market: What is the reality in the current software market? Are medium-to-large companies actually adopting FastAPI for core, heavy-traffic web services, or is it mostly stuck in the data science/AI niche?

Performance at Scale: Does the performance gap between Node and FastAPI actually matter in real-world large apps, or is it negligible until you hit Netflix-level scale?

I really want to stick with FastAPI because it makes coding fun for me again, but I don't want to invest heavily in a tool that companies won't trust for large-scale enterprise backends.

Would love to hear your experiences, especially from anyone who has migrated a large app from one to the other! Thanks.

I am a junior AI Engineer at a major multi-national company, my role in the last couple of months required me to design a complete backend from scratch for the tool i am working on I've done mostly of it by vibe coding with me choosing the decisions but i don't have that much knowledge in backend and system design to improve and make my tool better i usually decide with ai agents and let it do the work, so if i want to make myself better in backend and system design what books, courses should i take or see?

Hello all -

We've been generating PDFs synchronously for the last 5 years, but recently moved to async generation.

Each PDF takes at most around 2 seconds to generate.

The problem is that I can't make a major architecture change right now, so the current flow looks like this:

A service pushes a job into a PDF queue.

Workers pick it up, generate the PDF, and write it to a predictable URL.

Meanwhile, the calling service has already saved that URL in its DB, sent webhooks, etc.

The URL is now being consumed by web, Android, iOS, iPad, external APIs, and webhook clients. Some external developers have built their own apps on top of our APIs, so I can't expect them to implement custom polling logic either.

Since I own the web codebase, I patched that side by opening a small HTML page instead of the PDF URL. It polls until the PDF is ready, then redirects to the actual PDF.

That works for web, but obviously doesn't solve the problem for native clients or third-party integrations.

What I'd ideally like is for the original PDF URL to be usable immediately, even while generation is in progress.

A legit way i found was serving a placeholder PDF that somehow refreshes itself until the actual PDF is ready. I looked into JavaScript inside PDFs and XFA, but haven't found a reliable way to make this work across different PDF viewers. Native clients might use entirely different rendering engines, and I can't assume they'll execute embedded JavaScript or allow network requests.

A hacky way i thought was configuring the CDN/S3 delivery path to return a placeholder PDF when the actual file isn't available yet, with caching disabled. But that introduces extra requests and potentially unnecessary cost, and I'm not convinced it's the right approach.

I'm particularly interested in solutions that don't require changes across every client, since I need to support third-party consumers too. While I'm aligned the ideal approach would have been DB insertion only on pdf generation but it's a 5 year old thing, which I can't patch right now :(

Hey everyone,

I’m a mid-level frontend engineer (broke in via a bootcamp 5 years ago, and that structured format worked well for me).

I want to go full-stack now, so I’m looking for a backend-focused bootcamp built for people who already code, no “intro to programming”. Just a few months of focused, deep backend.

Two questions:

• Any backend bootcamps aimed at working devs / technical career switchers?
• Or at my level, would a structured self-paced path beat a bootcamp?

Appreciate any pointers!

My vote is the difference between "failed" and "I don't know whether it succeeded."

A request times out. The UI says it failed. The user retries. Meanwhile the first request may still be running, or it may have committed its change and lost the response.

That uncertainty can leak into everything: duplicate records, inconsistent status screens, customer support having to guess which operation to undo. A retry policy alone can't tell us which of those worlds we're in.

I'd rather see an explicit "outcome unknown" state than a reassuring red error message that silently invites the wrong action. Give the operation a stable identity, make its status queryable where possible, and define how reconciliation works. If the dependency can't provide enough information, the workflow may need an escalation path.

The other detail I think gets underestimated is cancellation. Canceling our wait for a response doesn't prove the remote operation stopped. A user-visible "canceled" label can be making a stronger promise than the system can keep.

Those feel less glamorous than consensus algorithms, but they sit directly on the boundary between a correct backend and what a person thinks happened.

What's the small-looking assumption that caused the biggest design change for you: timeouts, duplicate delivery, clocks, ordering, or something else?

Hi I am a 23 yo backend-focused SWE with inconsistent employment history with almost 6 months of fulltime experience since grad.

I am currently looking for a new job (resigned as backend eng from the current org 15 days ago).

I know microservices, queues, cache, websockets, go, javascript. I wanna learn applied AI eng asap as it has many roles in market.

I have three questions to the junior level devs as well as senior devs out there.

1. How should I prep for interviews (I suck at interviews)?

I have never done DSA rigorously (would most probably fail one). Should I hand code projects or should I use CC/agents and work more towards agentic dev plus verification skills? Should I remember the syntax to write in interviews. I mean what exactly to focus on? Will they ask me the workflow of my agentic dev or how I orchestrate agents?

2. How do I benchmark models, different models to understand when to use what models?

I use Sonnet medium or high and I don't know how to really benchmark for my own use case.

3. I want to buy a sub should I go for Claude / codex / cursor / Devin.

I have gemini pro due to an offer and the antigravity is the worst harness mankind ever created.

My use cases are :

1. I create courses with different md files to learn something and I let my agents to teach me like a youtuber / teacher / senior dev.
2. I wanna learn system designs in the same way like above and want to improve at agentic coding workflows + code verification and also wanna learn applied AI engineering and inference engineering.
3. I also want to create some videos for my family business.

Also, if there is any suggestion regarding discounts on Claude code and tips on how to find entry level jobs or how to get a job as a junior dev, it would be helpful (I cant find lot of entry level jobs on career portals).

Hey everyone! I'm looking for people who are interested in building a backend project together.

The goal isn't just to chat about backend development — I want to actually pick a project, split the tasks, and build it together from scratch. We can use Git, review each other's code, discuss architecture and technologies, and learn from each other along the way.

You don't need to be an expert. Whether you're a beginner or have some backend experience, you're welcome as long as you're motivated to learn and contribute regularly.

If you're interested, feel free to comment or DM me. If enough people are interested, we can form a small team and start working on a project together.

I’m going to share my experience and what I’ve learned about System Design over the years, one post every day. 🚀

Sharing what I know, what I’m learning, and practical insights along the way.

Let’s learn and grow together. ✌️

#SystemDesign #SoftwareEngineering #LearningInPublic #BackendDevelopment

Hey Gang 💵

i’m building a local data exploration web app using HTML/CSS/JS, a Python backend, and DuckDB with Parquet/CSV files. Despite having strong hardware, my local app runs slowly, whereas similar web apps online... even those using heavier frameworks like React / React router load and respond almost instantly. AI tools suggested basic caching or heavier frameworks like Django, but didn't solve the core performance bottleneck.

Coming from a frontend/design background, I haven't worked with high-performance data processing before. How do faster web apps structure their architecture to handle heavy calculations and render data so quickly?

Because from my experience with AI they are smart Tools but I'm not sure they're giving you the best solution every time so this time is well I'm doubting that I can get a solution from AI so I wonder what would you people here that knowledgeable and have a lot of experience would suggest ​​.