A Frontend Server, Front to Back

Explore the implementation of Fitbit's frontend server in this 47-minute Strange Loop Conference talk. Dive into the practical aspects of building a fast, stable, scalable, extensible, and easily monitored frontend server. Learn about queueing theory, software design, GC tuning, and the Netty library. Discover how Fitbit broke apart its monolith and implemented a 3000-line codebase that handles authentication, rate limiting, and traffic prioritization. Gain insights into topics such as async programming with Netty, request state machines, promise composition, queue management, load balancing strategies, and key metrics for monitoring. Understand the engineering decisions and tradeoffs involved in creating an efficient frontend server for a service-oriented system.