Exploring the Crucial Aspects of Backend Development

There’s is a good chance you know already what Backend Engineering is — Basically, writing the server-side logic of software applications. Writing code logic that defines the dynamicity of an application.

But again, backend development is not “only” about building backend infrastructure and writing codes and APIs that clients can consume.

When I started out as a software engineer, I was basically just writing codes the way I liked, just like a normal junior engineer would do, without a proper code structure, logic, and plan.

However, the way codes are written and the kind of logic that you use to solve the problem is just as important as building a business to become a successful one. This determines if your application will make it to the next phase.

Most developers just write code, So far it has solved the problem. That is a very bad trait for you as a developer.

There’s this meme that goes around where it is boldly written “If it works, don’t touch it”.

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That is very wrong!!!

If you are ever going to become a senior software engineer, never ever breed the mindset of “if it works don’t touch it”. You should put in every effort to understand how your code works and how efficient it is.

With that mindset, it means, that if the code is bad, and it works the way it should, you are going to leave it the way it is. Then you as just as bad as your code.

Badly written codes and badly planned software are very disastrous. You must have heard of companies that had to build their infrastructure from scratch all because they could not move on with their current code base because of how badly it had been written.

I’m going to be discussing three very crucial things that should be considered when building backend systems.

Reliability:

The concept of reliability of the application is often overlooked by young engineers who are just getting into the field of software engineering, and it is very crucial in the world of Backend Engineering. Think of it as the bedrock upon which robust and trustworthy applications are built.

The question you should ask yourself when building for reliability is this: Can my software, or application be trusted? In terms of security, can my software deliver what it has promised to do?

A lot of companies fail at these very crucial things. I am certain you have seen and used applications that do not just do what it says that it would do. It is either under-performing or not performing at all.

This means that the application is not reliable and the company should not be trusted.

Because they can obviously not deliver what they have promised you. This is one of the reasons why companies shut down when they or their software can no longer serve their users.

Think of it this way:

Say a Fintech app has promised to secure your money at all costs if you save your money with them, and give you a huge ROI(50%) if you save up to a certain amount within a short period of time. That sounds like a good business deal, right?

But, if for some reason, they could not secure your money, probably because of security breaches or an employee decided to make your money his or hers, and you could not get your ROI or your money back, that means they have broken the terms of agreement and you can no longer do business with that Fintech.

OR

The company could also loan you some money, and because of some technicalities, your debt seems to appear, cleared, and then you are happy.

That is an example of a very unreliable system. And it could cause harm to either the business or the customer, or both parties.

So what reliability entails is the system’s ability to consistently perform its intended functions without failures. In other words, can your application be trusted to work as expected, day in and day out, without surprises?

Some of the reasons for unreliable systems could be the result of syntax errors in code, loopholes, wrong logic, security breaches e.t.c

Huge consequences can follow as a result of an unreliable system: Data loss, application downtime e.t.c

Real-World Example:

In 2016, a major cloud provider faced a massive outage, affecting countless websites and services hosted on their platform. The cause? A misconfiguration that cascaded through their network. It resulted in not only significant downtime but also widespread frustration and economic losses for the affected businesses.

In hindsight, the outage could have been prevented or mitigated through redundancy and robust failover mechanisms. This incident serves as a stark reminder of the tangible impact that unreliability can have on businesses and users.

Scalability:

For a business to be successful, it needs to be able to scale and cater to the increasing demand for its service. The same goes for building the backend infrastructure of a wannabe robust application. The application should be built to accommodate its current users with ease and should also be able to expand resources when there is an unexpected increase in the systems resource, with an increase in service requests.

Think of it this way:

Imagine your favorite coffee shop — scaling would be like them effortlessly serving more customers, no matter how crowded it gets.

So, either there are very few customers or extremely overcrowded ones, the coffee shop should be able to serve each of its customers, regardless. Either by increasing the number of Baristas or some other way.

A good example of where this is used is when there are flash sales on e-commerce websites. It is expected by the website maintainers that there will be a very high demand for the website’s resources in this period. So they have to build a system that will help them to serve these customers without a lag.

Either by scaling up their server or database, either by horizontal or vertical scaling, or some other scaling technique

Although there are lots of challenging aspects of scaling, eventually it is something that can be worked around. As everything in software engineering is a trade-off.

One of the things that define how scalable software is, is its ability to efficiently handle increased workloads and growing demands while maintaining acceptable performance, response times, and resource utilization.

Scalability is about a software system’s capacity to adapt and expand gracefully as user numbers, data, and transaction volumes grow, without necessitating major architectural changes or causing a significant degradation in performance. In essence, the ability to scale reflects how well a software system can grow with the needs of its users and the demands of its environment.

Real-World Example:

Take Amazon as an example. During the holiday season, their traffic increases exponentially. They can’t rely solely on vertical scaling; it’s not feasible. Instead, they employ horizontal scaling to add more servers as needed to handle the surge in customer demand. This ensures that their website remains responsive and functional, even during peak traffic periods.

Maintainability

Maintainability as the name implies refers to the ease with which a software system can be modified, updated, and extended over time. This has to do majorly with code quality.

Every software developer should learn how to write better code. In terms of code structure, code modularity, code commits, variable and function naming, documentation, etc. Code quality is very important if the software will be sustainable.

Think of it as building a house with a solid foundation and easy-to-replace bricks. Without maintainability, even the most innovative software becomes a brittle structure, crumbling under the weight of its own complexity.

Real-World Lessons:

Let’s explore a real-world case. A startup once built an innovative app, but as it gained traction, the initial excitement turned into chaos. The codebase lacked modularity, and no proper version control was in place. New features led to unintended side effects, bug fixes introduced more bugs, and the software became a tangled mess. The lack of documentation made it even harder for the team to make sense of the codebase.

The consequences were dire: project delays, frustrated users, and higher costs. Eventually, they had to rewrite a significant portion of the software, causing substantial financial and reputational

General tips for building scalable, reliable, and maintainable applications.

• Code Quality — It is essential to write high-quality code as it is the foundation of any successful software project. It is essential to follow best coding practices and adhere to coding standards to ensure that the codebase is clean, readable, and maintainable. A good code quality reduces the likelihood of bugs and eases troubleshooting.
• Cache and CDNs — Caching frequently accessed data or resources reduces the load on the server and speeds up response times. This caching mechanism can significantly improve the performance and scalability of your application.
• Documentation — Documentation should be written as simple as possible. A comprehensive documentation of code and how to use the software is a pillar of maintainability. It helps the developers understand and maintain the system, simplifies onboarding new team members, and is invaluable for troubleshooting.
• Load balancing — Load balancing involves distributing incoming traffic across multiple servers or resources to ensure even distribution and prevent any single component from becoming a bottleneck. It improves the application's performance and reliability by maintaining high availability and fault tolerance.
• Monitoring and Alerting — Monitoring tools help to track the performance, health, and security of your application. Automated alerting systems can notify you of issues in real time, enabling rapid response to problems before they affect users.
• Logging and Auditing — Logging is a must to implement in your application. Logging captures information about the operation of your application. If logging is done rightly it helps in debugging and troubleshooting.
• Version Control — Version control systems such as Git, help track changes in your codebase, enable collaboration among developers, and provide a historical record of your code’s evolution. Putting version control to good use in building your application ensures that you can roll back to the previous version and maintain code integrity.
• Message Queues — Message queues ensure asynchronous communication between different parts of your application or between microservices. It decouples components and allows for a more flexible and scalable architecture.

Finally, the reason for DSA(Data Structures and Algorithms) is for developers to be able to think and figure out ways to better solve problems. Meaning there are some logic you should not use to solve a problem. Problem-solving should be done the right way and not anyhow.

By integrating these practices and principles into your application development process, you enhance its scalability, reliability, and maintainability.

I hope you were able to learn from this article. I would be more than happy to hear your feedback.

Thank you.