Spooky Stories: Chilling Temporal anti-patterns (part 2)

What this post added

This post details several Temporal anti-patterns and their corresponding best practices, framed within a horror movie theme. It covers: 1. The "MEGA Workflow" anti-pattern, advocating for smaller, single-process workflows and introducing Temporal Nexus as a solution for breaking down complexity. 2. "Arguing With Yourself" by duplicating state machine logic outside of Temporal Workflows, emphasizing that Workflows should manage process state directly. 3. "Hiding Behind the Chainsaws" by prematurely failing Workflows instead of leveraging default infinite retries for Activities, and the importance of understanding when to customize retry policies. 4. "Hiding In a Room With One Exit" by not using compensation patterns for business-level failures, and the need to programmatically handle undoing previous actions. Bonus sections cover "Wandering into a Dark Alley" by not using Temporal's built-in metrics and visibility, and "Vampires Sucking Up All Your Resources" by not using rate limiting to prevent noisy neighbor problems in self-hosted deployments.