When you build a service that talks to external components, you have to worry about the amount of time that a network call will make. The standard technique for protecting yourself is to use timeouts.

Most network libraries let you set timeouts to protect yourself but for local computation there are few tools to help you.

Timeboxing is the name we’ve given to a technique for setting timeouts on local computation. The name is borrowed from the handy organizational technique.Read more…