Xbox Live History

Having worked in Xbox Live I often get questions about its past.

REST efficiency

Making simple REST API is easy but once you do more complex things you don't want to stick with the simple rules any more.

Clients and eventual consistency

If you're working with a distributed system it is likely that you use eventual consistency to make your system scalable and robust but what does this means to clients?

How to know when to auto scale

When it comes to auto scaling I tend to see one of two approaches. But neither is actually good.

Abstracting vs Isolating dependencies

Anybody who is practicing TDD or BDD knows that it is important to abstract dependencies. Especially external dependencies you have no control over. But that might not be enough always.