Caching Is Easy. Production Caching Is Not.

This post is part of the series The True Code of Production Systems . The first time you add caching to a system, it feels like a superpower. One afternoon of work. Response times drop. Database load drops. The whole system breathes easier. You ship it, you move on, and somewhere in the back of your mind you file caching under "solved problems." That filing is the mistake. Because caching in production is not one decision. It is ten decisions , and most teams only consciously make one of them: t