Each PostgreSQL backend connection is an independent operating system process allocating ~10MB of RAM and competing for CPU scheduler time. Using connection poolers like PgBouncer or Neon connection pooling caps concurrent connections at ~50 while queuing burst requests. Better throughput, zero server crashes.

We were paying $18/month for an idle t3.micro EC2 instance just to run a lightweight campus dining API that only receives traffic at lunch and dinner. Porting to Cloudflare Workers (V8 isolates at edge) reduced cold starts to 0ms, eliminated server maintenance, and stayed comfortably within the 100,000 free daily request tier. Serverless edge is perfect for university projects.

When a process references memory, the CPU's MMU uses page tables to translate the virtual address to a physical RAM frame. If the present bit is 0, the CPU triggers a page fault interrupt. The OS pauses the thread, fetches the 4KB block from swap disk into RAM, updates the page table, and resumes the instruction. That is why excessive swapping grinds your computer to a halt.

Resume Claims: • "Deep expertise in Distributed Systems, Microservices, and Cloud Native Kubernetes Orchestration" Reality: • Followed a 12-minute freeCodeCamp video on YouTube where I ran 'docker run hello-world' and pasted the code from GitHub Copilot 🚀 Interview question: "Can you explain Raft consensus algorithm?" Me: "Sir, I believe in team consensus and positive workplace synergy."

In India, network connectivity drops every time you enter a basement elevator, train tunnel, or hostel bathroom. Building apps that immediately crash with 'No Internet' is terrible UX. Store state locally with SQLite / WatermelonDB and sync background mutations with exponential backoff when connectivity restores.

We ran a campus ticket booking system for our college fest. Everything was fine in testing with 50 users. As soon as 2,000 students refreshed at 10 AM, the server froze. PostgreSQL was doing sequential table scans on `orders.user_id` for every check. One simple `CREATE INDEX` reduced query latency from 12,000ms to 4ms. Always index your foreign keys!

For students wanting to build apps quickly for hackathons and startup MVPs, Flutter's cross-platform speed is unbeatable. But if your goal is Big Tech mobile engineering roles, Kotlin and Jetpack Compose are what recruiters search for. Don't let influencers confuse you — pick based on your immediate objective.

Classic computer architecture experiment: Iterate over 100,000 integers and conditionally sum elements > 128. If the array is unsorted, the CPU's branch predictor misses 50% of the time, stalling the instruction pipeline. If the array is sorted, branch prediction accuracy is ~99%, and execution runs 6x faster. Understanding hardware mechanics makes you a dramatically better programmer.