Distributed Systems Articles | Backend Study Lab

System Design Jun 29, 2026 4 min read

Circuit Breaker Pattern Explained

Learn how the circuit breaker pattern protects backend services from cascading failures, with closed, open, and half-open states.

System Design Jun 29, 2026 4 min read

Learn what distributed locks are, when backend systems use them, why they are risky, and what safer alternatives to consider.

System Design Jun 29, 2026 5 min read

Learn what eventual consistency means in distributed systems, why stale reads happen, and how backend teams design around them.

System Design Jun 29, 2026 4 min read

Learn how message queues work in backend systems, including producers, consumers, retries, dead-letter queues, ordering, and idempotency.

System Design Jun 29, 2026 5 min read

Learn safe backend retry patterns, including exponential backoff, jitter, retry budgets, idempotency, and when not to retry.

API Design Jun 29, 2026 4 min read

Learn how webhooks work in backend systems, including event delivery, signatures, retries, idempotency, and common design mistakes.

API Design Mar 29, 2026 6 min read

Learn what idempotency means in API design, why retries create duplicate actions, and how idempotency keys protect backend workflows.