Backend Engineering — Rakibul Islam

Launch chapters

DifficultyEst. timeProgress

01HTTP as a State MachineRequests, representations, method semantics, caching, and CORS from the protocol boundary inward.Fundamental35 min

02Routing and Request DispatchPath matching, method dispatch, precedence, parameters, and request context.Fundamental28 min

03Representation and SerializationHow values cross process boundaries through JSON, schemas, compatibility rules, and binary formats.Fundamental30 min

04Identity, Authentication, and AuthorizationIdentity proof, session lifecycle, token validation, per-resource policy, tenant isolation, and revocation.Important42 min

05Validation at Trust BoundariesResource limits, parsing, strict runtime structure, normalization, domain invariants, safe mapping, and failure ownership.Important32 min

06Layered Request HandlingHandlers, services, repositories, middleware, dependencies, and request-scoped context.Important34 min

07Networking and Packet RoutingLinks, prefixes, ARP, packet forwarding, route repair, and Internet reachability with a controlled networking lab.Important55 min

26Designing an Idempotent Payment EndpointBuild a local payment endpoint with durable replay, atomic debit and outbox writes, concurrency tests, and explicit provider boundaries.Important45 min

27Reliable Background Jobs: Retries, Backoff, and Dead LettersRecover receipt jobs after worker crashes using expiring leases, bounded backoff, deduplicated effects, and explicit dead-letter replay.Important45 min

28Tracing a Slow Request from API to DatabaseTrace a document-list request into SQLite, inspect query plans, and reproduce an index experiment with recorded workload and raw timing samples.Important40 min

Roadmap (18 topics)The curriculum beyond the launch chapters—protocols, data, reliability, security, and production delivery.

Resource-Oriented API Design · Durable Data and Transactions · Caching as Controlled Staleness · Deferred Work and Job Queues · Search Beyond SQL LIKE · Failure Semantics and Resilience · Service-to-Service Contracts · Configuration as a Runtime Contract · 10 more

View all 18 roadmap topics