Backend

Queues over callbacks

Jul 22, 2026·5 min read

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Callbacks are a promise you hope gets kept. Queues are a promise the system enforces for you — retried, ordered, and durable across a restart.

Once you stop treating “the request is in flight” as a valid state, a whole category of bugs disappears.

BackendReliability

Comments (4)

PS
Priya S.2 days ago
This matches how I think about our queue setup at work — appreciated the analogy.
MO
Marcus O.2 days ago
More of these, please. The "boring by design" framing is underrated.
- GR
  Gautam RajAuthor1 day ago
  Thanks! I'll probably write a follow-up on how this plays out with async workers specifically.
DK
Dev K.1 day ago
Curious how this applies to serverless, where you don't control the process lifecycle as directly.