Performance Tuning Before Launch

Short summary

A practical guide to pre-launch performance tuning for SaaS products, emphasizing data-driven optimization over intuition. The biggest mistake is optimizing from gut feel instead of measuring server response time, database query time, and frontend paint time. Two patterns account for most database bottlenecks: N+1 queries hidden by ORMs and missing indexes on foreign keys or filter columns, both of which are invisible at small scale but painful with real customer data.

• •Measure before optimizing: use pg_stat_statements and structured logging to find real bottlenecks
• •Fix N+1 queries by loading relations in bulk instead of looping
• •Index every foreign key and filter column on tables that will grow past a few thousand rows

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