Track · 19 modules · 167 lessons
A mapped track across four stages, from the vocabulary of scale to running systems in production, with a drill closing every module.
Start here · Core concepts
System design in one lesson
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Stage 01
Networking, APIs, load balancing and the vocabulary of scale.
API Design
APIs as contracts
API styles: REST, GraphQL, gRPC and the rest
REST API design
Pagination, filtering and batchingNew
API versioning and evolutionNew
Idempotency
Data formats: JSON, Protobuf, Avro and friends
GraphQL fundamentals
gRPC fundamentals
Rate limiting
API Security
Authentication vs authorization
Sessions vs tokens
JWT
OAuth 2.0 and OpenID Connect
Single sign-on (SSO)
API fundamentals drillNew
Stage 02
Caching, databases, storage and the data structures that make scale cheap.
Geospatial Data Structures
Geohash
Quad trees
R-trees
S2 and H3: hierarchical cells
Probabilistic Data Structures
Bloom filters
Cuckoo filters
Skip lists
Count-Min sketch
HyperLogLog
Merkle trees
MinHash and locality-sensitive hashing
Data structures for scale drillNew
Stage 03
Consensus, transactions, microservices and big-data pipelines.
Failure & Consistency
Why distribution is hard
Network partitions
Split brain
Heartbeats and failure detection
Handling failures
Consistency models
Time & Ordering
Clock synchronization
Logical clocks
Lamport timestamps
Vector clocks
Coordination & Consensus
Consensus
Paxos
Raft
Leader election
Distributed locks
Gossip protocols
CRDTs
Operational transformation
Distributed fundamentals drillNew
Stage 04
Deployment, observability, security and the interview playbook.