What does "circuit breaker" mean in programming?
circuit breaker is one of the most common terms in software development. This guide explains what it means, how it is used in practice, and why it matters, with real examples from the developer world.
Definition
A resilience pattern that stops calls to a failing service after a threshold of failures, allowing it time to recover. Like an electrical circuit breaker: when too many errors occur, the circuit 'opens' and subsequent calls fail fast instead of queuing up and cascading failures. After a timeout, it enters a 'half-open' state to test recovery.
Example
"The payment service has a circuit breaker: after 5 consecutive timeouts, it opens and returns a 503 immediately instead of waiting 30 seconds per request."
Related terms
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