Day 9/60: Configuration management

60 Day Go Backend Engineering Challenge

Today I focused on making configuration management improve production behavior, not just local developer comfort. The strongest checkpoints were emit logs, config reads, and shutdown signals in a way that tells the real runtime story, make test seams deliberate so handlers and services can be checked without ceremony, and treat observability and operational hygiene as part of the product behavior, not as cleanup.

The mistake I wanted to avoid was adding logs and tests that make noise without proving anything important. The day felt better once the service boundary stayed visible and each component had one job.

The goal for tomorrow is simple: keep the rule clear enough that the next service still feels related to the same design idea. I also want to keep tracing one request path end to end because it exposes weak assumptions faster than a larger demo.