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System Design Workbook

Learn system design from the ground up — clear explanations, real examples, and plain-English analogies. No prior experience needed.

The Workbook
Start with the fundamentals
First lesson: What Is System Design?
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The Cheatsheet

Already know the basics? Jump to the condensed, scannable reference of every pattern, number, and trade-off.

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Fundamentals

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The vocabulary every system design conversation is built on. Start here.

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  1. 1What Is System Design?What the discipline actually is, why interviews test it, and how to think about trade-offs.
  2. 2Latency vs ThroughputTwo numbers people constantly mix up — and the difference matters in every design.
  3. 3Availability, Reliability & SLAsWhat "five nines" really means, and the promises behind SLA / SLO / SLI.
  4. 4The CAP Theorem (and PACELC)Why a distributed system can't have it all when the network breaks — explained plainly.
  5. 5Consistency ModelsStrong vs eventual consistency, and the in-between guarantees that make apps feel correct.
  6. 6Scaling: Vertical vs HorizontalBigger machine vs more machines — the first fork in the road for any growing system.
  7. 7Load Balancing BasicsHow traffic gets spread across servers, and the algorithms that decide who handles what.
  8. 8Caching BasicsThe single highest-leverage trick in system design — plus the traps that bite beginners.
  9. 9Back-of-the-Envelope EstimationTurn 'a billion users' into QPS, storage, and server counts in under five minutes.
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Core Building Blocks

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Databases, caches, queues, CDNs — the components you wire together in a design.

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Design Patterns

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Reusable solutions to recurring problems, grouped by category. Also available as a quick-reference cheatsheet.

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46 lessons available · more on the way