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System design, understood

For Developers comfortable with basic APIs and databases who use AI to propose architecture but need to judge load, state, failure, consistency, security, and evolution. No distributed-systems background required. · 15 days · Concepts

A 15-day course
One short lesson a day · go at your own pace
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The days
Listen to the whole course · 78 min
  1. 1Draw the request pathBy the end you can trace one Slot booking request from a customer tap to a confirmed record and back. Listen · 5 min
  2. 2Separate state from computationBy the end you can label each Slot component as stateful or stateless and explain the recovery consequence. Listen · 5 min
  3. 3Estimate load before choosing architectureBy the end you can make a rough Slot traffic estimate, state its assumptions, and identify the busiest interval. Listen · 5 min
  4. 4Find the bottleneckBy the end you can identify Slot's current bottleneck from capacity and timing evidence instead of guessing from the diagram. Listen · 5 min
  5. 5Cache without lyingBy the end you can choose what Slot may cache, set a freshness rule, and protect booking correctness. Listen · 5 min
  6. 6Queue work that can waitBy the end you can decide which Slot work belongs in a queue and define what happens when workers fall behind. Listen · 5 min
  7. 7Partition data with careBy the end you can choose a partition key for Slot and identify a hotspot or cross-partition operation it creates. Listen · 5 min
  8. 8Replicate for survivalBy the end you can explain how replication helps Slot survive a storage failure and what lag changes. Listen · 5 min
  9. 9Choose consistency deliberatelyBy the end you can choose a consistency rule for Slot booking, profile, and reporting data during a network split. Listen · 5 min
  10. 10Make retries safeBy the end you can make Slot's booking operation idempotent and explain how it handles an unknown first outcome. Listen · 5 min
  11. 11Design for partial failureBy the end you can choose how Slot degrades when one dependency is slow or unavailable. Listen · 5 min
  12. 12Observe what users experienceBy the end you can choose Slot signals that connect a customer symptom to the responsible path. Listen · 5 min
  13. 13Protect boundaries and secretsBy the end you can mark Slot's trust boundaries, separate authentication from authorization, and place secrets outside untrusted clients. Listen · 5 min
  14. 14Evolve without breaking clientsBy the end you can plan a compatible Slot interface and data change across old and new clients. Listen · 5 min
  15. 15Defend an AI-generated architectureBy the end you can audit an AI-generated Slot design, reject unsupported complexity, and defend a smaller architecture against named requirements. Listen · 6 min