System Design

System Design Advanced

Consistent hashing, distributed caching, Kafka-style event streams, Raft consensus, sagas, rate limiting and full case studies — Twitter, WhatsApp, Uber, YouTube. The depth senior engineers are expected to have.

Advanced8 weeks8 modules · 38 lessons

What you'll walk away with

  • Reason about consistency, consensus and partitions like a distributed systems engineer
  • Design event-driven architectures with exactly the right delivery guarantees
  • Whiteboard large-scale systems end-to-end under interview pressure
  • Evaluate real architecture trade-offs with numbers, not vibes
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Progress saves on this device automatically. Reviews follow the 1 · 3 · 7 · 21 · 60 day spaced schedule.

How to study this course (the neuroscience built in)

Active Recall

Answer the recall questions BEFORE revealing. Trying to remember — even failing — builds memory 3x stronger than rereading.

Spaced Repetition

Completed lessons return for review after 1, 3, 7, 21 and 60 days. Review exactly when you're about to forget.

Chunking

Each module is one small digestible chunk with a one-line memory hook. Finish a chunk fully before starting the next.

Feynman Technique

Every module ends with a teach-it-back prompt. If you can't explain it simply, you haven't learned it yet.

Interleaving

Mixed revision phases deliberately shuffle topics — discrimination between problem types is what exams test.

Dual Coding

Interactive simulators pair visuals with text. Two memory channels beat one — always do the interactives, not just the videos.

Curriculum

Sharding & the modulo-N trap (visual deep dive)12 minConsistent hashing ring simulator15 min
Virtual nodes and balanced load12 min
Dynamo-style partitioning in the wild (Cassandra, Memcached)14 min
Compute key movement when a 5th node joins (by hand)20 min

Feynman Prompt — teach it back

Teach the 360° ring to a junior: nodes and keys on a clock, walk clockwise to assign.

Active Recall — answer before revealing