A sourdough starter is a resilient, distributed community of microbes. Here is what it teaches about building systems that survive neglect, heat waves, and single points of failure.
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Caching by reflex adds a cache because a dashboard looks bad. Caching with intent starts by naming the expensive computation, the acceptable staleness, and the invalidation path before a single key is written.
Every cache is a bet on the future correctness of data. This article explains how to start from invalidation rules, split data by volatility, and instrument cache age to avoid serving stale lies.
A budget without enforcement is just a wish. The practical move is to attach deadlines to every request, derive each hop's timeout from what remains, and let the system cancel work that overruns.