Fully understanding existing components and how they work is something we rarely do.
We throw our hands and blame the component, the tool, the framework, the language, the database but rarely we blame our lack of understanding.
asynchronous calls are a mirage.
There always something synchronous being blocked upstream.
If have 3-5 years of experience in the backend and want to elevate your skills, consider grabbing the advanced Backend engineering Bundle.
The Advanced Backend Engineering Bundle
courses.husseinnasser.com/bundle
Coupons: BACK-MAR2026-A, PF-MAR2026-A , WS-MAR2026-A
While unearthing bugs, the more time you spend digging for their source the more you level up.
The more you dig, the more you discover, until you hit the nest and you can torch it permanently.
If you quit digging early, the bugs may surface back in a way that surprises you.
I really don’t enjoy troubleshooting timezone related bugs.
Pretty cool that sql server gives you a hint to skip over (read past) rows that are locked. This avoids blocking scenarios especially if you don’t care about new state of rows.
NGINX Architecture - a substack article open.substack.com/pub/hnasr/p/...
Fundamentals of Operating Systems course oscourse.win
I don’t know if others run into this too, but it feels great when you think out a problem and come up with a novel solution.
In this video I do a deep dive on the Postgres 18 asynchronous read IO (writes will come in later releases)
YouTube link
youtu.be/yGjGc21mmoU?...
Spotify podcast link
open.spotify.com/episode/5Opi...
Always great to listen to Sanada san talks. It really shows how much deep knowledge he has in Postgres.
Enjoyed the deep dive on vacuum, especially understanding why pg17 switches to a radix tree to store dead tuples (compared to simple array)
youtu.be/kRMQlz7JW4U?...
AI is fed on the knowledge humans discovered, tethered to the limitations and assumptions of current affairs.
Limited offer expired February 5th using These coupons, you can have all three courses $29.97. Grab them now here.
OS Course: OS-FEB2026-A
www.udemy.com/course/funda...
Network Course: NET-FEB2026-A
www.udemy.com/course/funda...
Backend Course: BACK-FEB2026-A
www.udemy.com/course/funda...
The network course introduces the bridge to the backend, how the application and the kernel sockets work the network.
Finally the backend course introduces you to the common backend design patterns how it interacts with both the OS and network to receive requests, process and write responses.
1- Fundamentals of Operating Systems
2- Fundamentals of Network Engineering
3- Fundamentals of Backend Engineering
The OS course polishes your knowledge about how the application work with the kernel, socket programming and file systems.
If you new to backend engineering, built crud apps and want to take your skill to the next level consider grabbing my Intermediate Backend engineering bundle. It consists of three fundamental courses in this order for an effective learning roadmap.
With DRAM prices surging, SSD prices are rising as well.
This is partly because the flash Translation Layer (FTL) maintains and caches logical to physical address mapping metadata in the SSD’s onboard DRAM.
I just realized, “or” in common English really means XOR in logic.
“You can have A or B” implies you cannot have both.
While in computer logic A or B means having both A and B is still true.
Three conditions to evolve your software engineering skills:
1- Run into a problem you never seen before
2- Admit you don’t understand it
3- Have the interest to pursue it
The GOAWAY frame is in h2 is critical spec in h2 and h3 when clients send more requests on the same connection than the backend can handle.
I posted this on insecure WIFI from 39,000 ft altitude open.substack.com/pub/hnasr/p/...
A substack post
what’s yours will find you.
The value of an error is what it shows you.
TCP is a single stream
We use tcp to send messages ( think of those as HTTP requests as an example of a message)
Some messages are large, some are small. TCP doesn’t see messages, it sees a stream of bytes.
network.husseinnasser.com
All my courses
courses.husseinnasser.com
Routing is one of the most critical concepts in networking, yet it is challenging to understand. In this post, I break down the concept of routing from the very basics to the most advanced routing tables that power the Internet.
open.substack.com/pub/hnasr/p/... substack.com/inbox/post/1...
The beauty of Partitioning
Partitioning splits a large table horizontally using a partition key column where all rows with the same partition key are placed in their own table called partition.
Truncate is a DDL
Check the Fundamentals of Network Engineering course the new year NTNY26. I also recommend taking the OS course as a prerequisite code OSNY26.
courses.husseinnasser.com
Happy new year! and Thank you for all your support
-Hussein
A request is like an arrow. its maximum speed is as it leaves the bow, then it slows down due to air and gravity.
Troubleshooting Backend Course: TROUBLE-FALL25
www.udemy.com/course/disco...
Realtime Backends Course: REALTIME-FALL25
www.udemy.com/course/scala...
Find all courses here courses.husseinnasser.com
