Service workers are a powerful tool in web development that enable offline-first and performance benefits, but they can also be complex and lead to issues with caching. To solve these problems, developers need to set cache-control headers for their service worker files, which tells the browser to always check for updated versions of the file instead of waiting for the default expiry time. In some cases, passing `updateViaCache: 'none'` when registering a service worker can also help resolve issues with caching.