6 min read
Why I still choose Node.js for high-throughput backends
After eight years building production systems, Node.js keeps earning its place. Not because it is trendy, but because event-driven I/O still wins when latency budgets are tight.
Personal blog · Pablo Vallejo
This is a blog.
Notes on backend engineering, production systems, and the opinions that come from eight years of building software at scale. Written by Pablo Vallejo — for peers, hiring managers, and anyone curious about how high-throughput backends are really built.
This is a personal space: no corporate voice, no fluff. Just experience shared honestly — the wins, the trade-offs, and the lessons I wish someone had told me earlier. Perfect for a quick read before we connect on LinkedIn.
Articles
Latest posts
Short reads on engineering craft, system design, and career reflections. Each card is a preview — the full article is one click away.
- 8 min read
Lessons from serving 10 million users
Scale changes the rules. Caching strategies that worked at 100k users become liabilities at 10M. Here is what I learned shipping backends where every millisecond counts.
- 5 min read
TypeScript strict mode saved our production twice
Strict mode is not bureaucracy. It is insurance. Two incidents that never reached users because the compiler caught contract drift before deploy.
- 7 min read
Big Data pipelines: batch vs stream in practice
The textbook says stream everything. Production says pick the right tool. A pragmatic framework for choosing between batch and real-time pipelines.
- 6 min read
Observability is not optional at scale
Logs alone will not save you. Metrics, traces, and structured context are the minimum viable toolkit for teams running services under strict SLAs.
- 9 min read
Microservices vs monoliths: a pragmatic take
The best architecture is the one your team can operate. I have shipped both. Here is when each approach actually makes sense for backend teams.
- 5 min read
SLAs under 300ms: what actually moves the needle
Faster frameworks help. Better indexes help more. The real gains come from eliminating synchronous hops, right-sizing payloads, and measuring the right things.
- 4 min read
Async communication for distributed backend teams
Remote backend work demands clarity over speed. How I structure RFCs, incident write-ups, and design docs so async teams ship without constant meetings.