Store Timestamps in UTC, Convert at the Edges
Time zone bugs are rarely dramatic. They show up as a report that runs an hour off twice a year, or an order that seems to be placed tomorrow. Most of them come from one habit: storing local time. The
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Validate Your Config at Startup, Not at 3 a.m.
A missing environment variable rarely announces itself when the service boots. It waits. The app starts, health checks pass, and the first time a user hits the one code path that reads PAYMENT_WEBHOOK
Put a Timeout on Every Network Call
Here is a bug that never shows up in testing: a service you call stops answering. It doesn't fail. It doesn't return an error. It just holds the connection open and says nothing. If your code has no t
Make Your Retries Safe: Idempotency in Plain Terms
Retries are everywhere: HTTP clients, job queues, webhook senders, that one engineer who double-clicks every button. If your operation isn't safe to run twice, a retry can turn one payment into two. A