Kushughulikia errors na failed messages ni muhimu kwa consumers wa Kafka wanaoaminika — kuamua nini cha kufanya wakati processing ya message inashindwa (retry, skip, au kupeleka kwenye dead letter queue). Error handling sahihi inazuia data loss na consumers waliokwama.
Tatizo: processing failures
When a consumer fails to PROCESS a message (bad data, downstream failure, bug):
→ BLOCKING retry forever → the consumer gets STUCK on a "poison" message (can't progress)
→ skipping silently → data LOSS (the message is lost)
→ crashing → consumer restarts, reprocesses, may get stuck again
→ need a deliberate error-handling strategy.
