Bibliotheca · Est. MMXXVI

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I'm Rishabh Singhal — I write about software engineering, system design, and the tools I use every day.

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#caching #reliability-engineering #distributed-systems #system-design

When Caches Bite Back: Stampedes, Avalanches, and Penetration

October 27, 2026 8 min read

The cache that made your system fast can also take it down. Three failure modes, the 2010 Facebook outage, and how to defend against each. Part 6 of 8.

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#caching #http #cdn #system-design

Every Layer Is a Cache: From Browser to CDN to Database

October 26, 2026 7 min read

A request can stop at six different caches before it reaches your database. Here's how HTTP caching works, and how it goes wrong. Part 5 of 8.

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#caching #distributed-systems #consistency #system-design

Cache Invalidation: Why It's Really One of the Two Hard Problems

October 22, 2026 8 min read

TTLs, deletes, versions, and the race condition that leaves stale data in your cache forever. Part 4 of the 8-part caching series.

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#caching #algorithms #system-design #performance

Who Gets Evicted? LRU, LFU, and the Algorithms Inside Real Caches

October 20, 2026 11 min read

Caches are always full. How eviction policies decide what to throw out, why LRU gets fooled by scans, and how to build an LRU yourself. Part 3 of 8.

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#caching #backend-development #system-design #databases

Cache-Aside, Write-Through, Write-Behind: How Your Cache Talks to Your Database

October 14, 2026 7 min read

Five ways to wire a cache to a database, what each one costs you, and how to pick. Part 2 of the 8-part caching series.

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#caching #backend-development #system-design #performance

Caching 101: The 100x Trick Behind Every Fast System

October 10, 2026 8 min read

What a cache actually is, why it works, and the one formula that tells you if yours is helping. Part 1 of an 8-part series on caching.

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#career #amazon #google #engineering-culture

Two Companies, One Engineer: The Muscles Amazon and Google Built in Me

September 27, 2026 10 min read

Three and a half years at Amazon, one year at Google - what actually changes when you switch, beyond the obvious.

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#backend-development #databases #system-design #distributed-systems

Transactions: The Art of All or Nothing

April 18, 2026 6 min read

A deep dive into database transactions - the beauty and the nightmare.

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Welcome to the Reading Room

New Arrivals

When Caches Bite Back: Stampedes, Avalanches, and Penetration

Every Layer Is a Cache: From Browser to CDN to Database

Cache Invalidation: Why It's Really One of the Two Hard Problems

Who Gets Evicted? LRU, LFU, and the Algorithms Inside Real Caches

Cache-Aside, Write-Through, Write-Behind: How Your Cache Talks to Your Database

Caching 101: The 100x Trick Behind Every Fast System

Two Companies, One Engineer: The Muscles Amazon and Google Built in Me

Transactions: The Art of All or Nothing

Welcome to the
Reading Room