BeginnerCoder
Donate← DevOps Foundations
14 / 25
Lesson 14 — Exponential backoff
Backoff with a ceiling
Doubling the wait forever gets silly: the 10th retry would wait almost two minutes. So real retry policies add a cap — a maximum wait. The wait is the doubled value or the cap, whichever is smaller — Math.min picks it; ** means "to the power of", so 2 ** 3 is 8.
Math.min(1000, 100 * 2 ** 4) // 1000, not 1600
Why it matters: capped backoff keeps retries polite without making users wait minutes.
Want it another way?
Task
Compute wait as base * 2 ** a, capped at 1000 with Math.min, for 6 attempts.
Run your code — when the output matches the task, you will see a green check. Then mark the lesson complete.
Test your knowledge
Test your knowledgeA quick 3-question quiz on this lesson — instant feedback.