System Design
Learn how to design scalable, reliable systems ā from load balancers to distributed databases.
Introduction to System Design
What system design is, why it matters, and how to think about building systems that scale.
Client-Server Architecture
The foundation of every application on the internet. Understanding how clients and servers communicate is the starting point for all system design.
REST vs GraphQL vs gRPC
Three ways to design APIs ā each with different tradeoffs. Learn when to reach for each one.
SQL vs NoSQL
Two fundamentally different approaches to storing data. Learn the tradeoffs and when to reach for each one.
Caching
Don't do the same expensive work twice. Caching is one of the most powerful tools for building fast, scalable systems.
Load Balancers
How to distribute traffic across multiple servers to avoid single points of failure and scale horizontally.
Message Queues
How async messaging decouples services, absorbs traffic spikes, and keeps systems resilient.
CDNs ā Content Delivery Networks
How content gets delivered to users fast regardless of where they are in the world.
Proxies ā Forward vs Reverse Proxy
Two types of proxies, two different jobs. Forward proxies protect clients, reverse proxies protect servers.
Consistency and Availability Tradeoffs
In distributed systems you can't have everything. Understanding the tradeoff between consistency and availability is fundamental to every design decision.