Dev Tools · 2h ago
Retry vs Idempotency: Why Confusing Them Causes Payment Bugs
A senior engineer mistakenly called a payment service with exponential backoff retries 'idempotent,' a category error that can lead to double charges. Retry logic lives on the client, while idempotency is a server-side guarantee that duplicate requests have the same effect. Proper implementation requires both, with the same idempotency key reused across retries.
Meridian48 take
This is a clear, practical distinction that many teams get wrong, but the article's code examples are language-specific and may not apply to all architectures.
Read the full reporting
The Difference Between Retry and Idempotency They're Not the Same →
DEV Community
retry-logicidempotency