📰 Dev.to · Sir Max

Offset pagination got slow and silently duplicated rows under writes. Here's why I switched to cursor pagination, with working FastAPI code and real benchmark n

Build a thread-safe token bucket rate limiter from scratch in Python, wire it into FastAPI, and scale it with Redis — with working code and the pitfalls I hit i

Store UTC, use aware datetimes, send ISO 8601 on the wire, separate instant from intent, and test across DST boundaries. The five timezone rules that prevent si

How to design API error responses that developers can actually act on, using RFC 9457 Problem Details with a working FastAPI example.

Webhooks look simple but break in production. Retries with jitter, HMAC signatures, and idempotency keys — with copy-paste Python code.

Running REST, gRPC, and GraphQL side by side in production: the tradeoffs, the debugging pain, the caching problem, and what I'd pick again.

A practical guide to making your API endpoints safe to retry — idempotency keys, natural idempotency, and optimistic concurrency, with working Python examples.

asyncio.gather, Semaphore, and Queue — three async patterns that took me two years to learn. Real code examples from production.

Idempotency, async acknowledgment, signature verification, and monitoring — four hard-won lessons from processing 50,000 webhooks a day.

JWT, API Keys, and OAuth2 each broke in production in ways I didn't expect. Here's what I learned, with working Python code.

A practical guide to handling API rate limits with exponential backoff, jitter, and Retry-After headers — complete with production-ready Python code.

Most API clients treat every error the same way. Here's a 5-step approach to handle errors gracefully — with retry logic, status code handling, graceful degrada

A practical Python cache that reduced API costs by 60%. Full code, edge cases, and what I got wrong the first time.

Real lessons from 3 years of building production APIs: treat your API as a product, document before coding, rate limit everything, make errors useful, version c

A tiny CLI tool for concurrent API latency testing with percentiles — and the surprising things I learned about real-world latency claims.

I built APIs with all three. Here's when each one shines and the real tradeoffs nobody talks about — with a decision framework you can actually use.

How adding PgBouncer reduced our database connections by 97%, cut query latency by 96%, and saved 40% on our monthly bill — with real numbers.

How switching from plaintext logs to structured JSON logging with structlog cut debugging time from 40 minutes to under 2 minutes — with real Python code and jq

Stop returning 200 for errors and 500 for bad input. A practical guide to using the right HTTP status codes, with real examples from hundreds of API reviews.

A practical guide to preventing duplicate API requests with idempotency keys, using Redis and FastAPI.

Mocks test what you think the API looks like. Contract testing verifies what it actually looks like. A practical guide with real code examples.

SELECT *, N+1 queries, and OFFSET pagination were silently killing our API performance. Here's how I fixed all three in one afternoon — with real before/after c

Four layers of API resilience that eliminated 3 AM on-call pages: timeouts, retry with jittered backoff, circuit breakers, and graceful degradation. With real P

Reference docs tell developers what your API can do. Cookbooks show them what they can build. Here's how switching formats tripled developer engagement.