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Root Cause: Stories and Lessons from Two Decades of Backend Engineering Bugs
The Software Engineering industry often evaluates engineers based on how many lines of code they write, how many years of experience they have, or how many features they ship. But I think a more powerful metric is the number of bugs they encountered, reproduced, traced to their root cause and fixed. Those experiences shape an engineer far more than raw output or time served in my opinion, let me elaborate.
Bugs hinder the stability of software, which affects the user experience. You may have a feature-complete product, but if it has bugs preventing users from completing tasks, the user experience suffers. You may have a modern software stack, but if the system isn't performing or stable, that too indirectly affects the user experience.
Root Cause is a collection of dozens of real-world software bugs drawn from nearly two decades of my personal backend engineering experience. Each chapter is centered on a specific failure, the observable effect experienced by users, and follows the investigative journey toward uncovering its root cause. These bugs span a wide range of systems and failure modes, from intermittent API timeouts and performance degradation to subtle state corruption and distributed system edge cases.
I also introduce a fundamental backend engineering concept in each chapter that is related to the bug to make book can be picked up by any can be picked up and listened by anyone without prior experience.
Perhaps the biggest value you will learn from this book is the joy of pursuing bugs, I think there is an inherent deterrence when working with bugs, almost like its a chore or in some cases failure if you own the area where the bug was found. However, if you push through, detach from the bug and approach it as if you are approaching a new puzzle that has nothing to do with you, the rewards are plenty.
I hope you enjoy the book Hussein Nasser
Bugs hinder the stability of software, which affects the user experience. You may have a feature-complete product, but if it has bugs preventing users from completing tasks, the user experience suffers. You may have a modern software stack, but if the system isn't performing or stable, that too indirectly affects the user experience.
Root Cause is a collection of dozens of real-world software bugs drawn from nearly two decades of my personal backend engineering experience. Each chapter is centered on a specific failure, the observable effect experienced by users, and follows the investigative journey toward uncovering its root cause. These bugs span a wide range of systems and failure modes, from intermittent API timeouts and performance degradation to subtle state corruption and distributed system edge cases.
I also introduce a fundamental backend engineering concept in each chapter that is related to the bug to make book can be picked up by any can be picked up and listened by anyone without prior experience.
Perhaps the biggest value you will learn from this book is the joy of pursuing bugs, I think there is an inherent deterrence when working with bugs, almost like its a chore or in some cases failure if you own the area where the bug was found. However, if you push through, detach from the bug and approach it as if you are approaching a new puzzle that has nothing to do with you, the rewards are plenty.
I hope you enjoy the book Hussein Nasser
317 pages, Kindle Edition
Published April 6, 2026
About the author
Hussein Nasser
9 books35 followersHussein Nasser is an ESRI award-winning solution architect working in the GIS field since 2006. He is the author of four books in the ArcGIS technology, Administering ArcGIS for Server, Learning ArcGIS Geodatabases, Building Web Applications with ArcGIS and the latest published in 2015 ArcGIS by Example. In 2007, Hussein won the first place in the annual ArcGIS Server Code Challenge conducted at the ESRI Developer Summit in Palm Springs, California. In 2014, Hussein started IGeometry Youtube channel where he periodically publishes educational GIS videos.
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
April 21, 2026
Content issue. Missing figures.
The book has serious content issues. Figures 8-3 and 8-5 are missing, and I do not know whether other figures are missing as well. I noticed these omissions and stopped reading. I checked both the Kindle desktop app and the mobile app, and the figures are missing on both devices.
In addition, the indexes, which are usually very short entries, are placed at the end of the book. They should be located where they are referenced. There is no reason to navigate to the end of the book to read a few words or a sentence and then return to the main text. Navigating back from these entries is also difficult because they are so small that they require very precise clicking. Because of this, I stopped using them, which is very disappointing.
The image descriptions repeat the text descriptions and duplicate content from the book, which does not make sense.
Another issue is that the glossary is placed in a separate section at the end of the book. It would be better placed at the beginning or integrated into the main content. Otherwise, it is difficult to know where the terms are referenced in the text. In practice, I would need to read the glossary first before starting the book.
The book itself is interesting, and the idea is excellent. However, the reading experience is not pleasant because of these content issues.
The book has serious content issues. Figures 8-3 and 8-5 are missing, and I do not know whether other figures are missing as well. I noticed these omissions and stopped reading. I checked both the Kindle desktop app and the mobile app, and the figures are missing on both devices.
In addition, the indexes, which are usually very short entries, are placed at the end of the book. They should be located where they are referenced. There is no reason to navigate to the end of the book to read a few words or a sentence and then return to the main text. Navigating back from these entries is also difficult because they are so small that they require very precise clicking. Because of this, I stopped using them, which is very disappointing.
The image descriptions repeat the text descriptions and duplicate content from the book, which does not make sense.
Another issue is that the glossary is placed in a separate section at the end of the book. It would be better placed at the beginning or integrated into the main content. Otherwise, it is difficult to know where the terms are referenced in the text. In practice, I would need to read the glossary first before starting the book.
The book itself is interesting, and the idea is excellent. However, the reading experience is not pleasant because of these content issues.
May 12, 2026
Fascinating read if you are into networking (web application stacks).
Told in a similar style to Mark Russinovich’s series of “Case of the unexplained” YouTube videos.
Told in a similar style to Mark Russinovich’s series of “Case of the unexplained” YouTube videos.
June 23, 2026
A "technical novella" mostly on threading that fits an interesting niche. The second half of the book beats the first and the appendix was fun.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews