vinay sharma

could we please just round this up to 100 to make the calculation easier?

As a Backend Engineer in 2026, please learn: One backend language deeply (Go/Java/Rust/Python) — not just syntax, but profiling, concurrency, memory, and stdlib patterns. HTTP fundamentals — methods, headers, caching, content negotiation, ETags, idempotency, and real-world pagination. API design — REST done right, versioning, backward compatibility, error models, and sane request/response contracts. Databases — Postgres/MySQL internals basics, indexes, query plans, transactions, isolation levels, locks, and connection pooling. Caching — Redis patterns, TTLs, invalidation strategy, stampede protection, hot keys, and when not to cache. Distributed systems basics — timeouts, retries, backoff, circuit breakers, backpressure, partial failures, CAP tradeoffs. Messaging & async — Kafka/Rabbit/SQS, consumer groups, ordering, deduplication, DLQs, replay, and exactly-once myths. Security — authn vs authz, OAuth/OIDC, JWT vs sessions, secret management, RBAC, and threat modeling basics. Observability — structured logs, metrics, tracing, SLOs/SLIs, dashboards, and debugging prod without vibes. Performance — profiling, latency budgets, tail latency, N+1 issues, batching, compression, serialization costs. Concurrency — threads vs async, race conditions, locking, queues, worker pools, and safe shared-state patterns. Reliability engineering — graceful degradation, load shedding, rate limiting, bulkheads, and incident playbooks. Containers — Docker basics, image hygiene, multi-stage builds, resource limits, and runtime debugging. Kubernetes essentials — deployments, services, ingress, configmaps/secrets, autoscaling, probes, and rollouts. CI/CD — build once deploy many, migrations strategy, canary/blue-green, feature flags, rollback discipline. Data modeling — event schemas, schema evolution, data contracts, and avoiding “tight coupling via DB tables”. System design — partitioning, sharding, replication, consistency models, and designing for failure from day 1. Communication — writing crisp RFCs, making tradeoffs explicit, and aligning teams (this is the senior skill). Pick ONE stack and go deep. Stop hopping frameworks. Depth ships.