> I’ve been in software for 20 years and it’s the first time I hear “back pressure”. Am I too old already?

I first wrote code 50 years ago (I am 63yo) so yes, imo we are too old, but ...

It is worth noting that systems concepts/techniques often have analogues aka different names and histories in different fields and subfields.

If I were to "explain" back pressure to an ordinary person I might model my analogy to the logic of this ~classic joke:

Bob: Let's go to Trendio(TM) for dinner tonight!? Carol: Oh, nobody goes there anymore, it's too crowded!

Also, often a modern take-this-for-granted concept may be seen as an outgrowth of previous problems or solutions.

For example back pressure is conceptually adjacent to the clever~hack/design of random backoff in Ethernet.

Or if talking to a math geek or traffic planner you might relate it to ~modern understanding of congestion including oddities like possibly removing roads/routes to ~paradoxically improve traffic flow.

We are deep in the Information Age barreling towards Singularities, so none of us, young or old, see and understand but a tiny fraction of where we've been, are, or might be going.

Cue Calvin & Hobbes cartoon of us racing downhill in a fragile box.

Perhaps, as others have essentially suggested, merging your mind with an ~AI will help (albeit temporarily, imo). I prefer to think of us/greybeards as potentially Wise, yet, paradoxically, clueless.

Beginner's Mind, with likely no time/future for Mastery, is still potentially pleasant, and I would argue useful for Debugging.

Obviously this modern AI tsunami is phase shifting us all into debug~mode anyway, eh?