api returns success, everything looks fine, but the actual result happens later and sometimes doesn’t match what you expect
especially with async stuff, queues, external providers, timing between systems
wrote this to try and map out what’s actually happening between “request handled” and the final outcome
curious how others think about it
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47742677
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47803517
etc.
for me it wasn’t really about the idea itself, more how often this still trips you up in real systems
things look identical at the API level, same response, same logs, but the actual outcome drifts depending on what happens after
that’s the part that kept biting me in production, so tried to break that down a bit more concretely
api returns success, everything looks fine, but the actual result happens later and sometimes doesn’t match what you expect
especially with async stuff, queues, external providers, timing between systems
wrote this to try and map out what’s actually happening between “request handled” and the final outcome
curious how others think about it