Master the principles of system design used by top tech companies. This track covers everything from client-server architecture and networking fundamentals to database selection, scalability patterns, and reliability engineering. Work through real-world case studies designing systems like URL shorteners, social media feeds, and chat applications. By the end, you will be able to reason about trade-offs and architect complete systems from requirements to deployment.
Core concepts of networked systems: client-server model, HTTP, DNS, load balancers, CDNs, and proxies
SQL vs NoSQL, sharding, replication, caching strategies, and Redis
Horizontal vs vertical scaling, microservices, message queues, and event-driven architecture
CAP theorem, ACID properties, eventual consistency, and circuit breakers
Design real-world systems: URL shortener, Twitter feed, chat system, and rate limiter
Design a complete system from requirements gathering to architecture diagram
A comprehensive 20-question exam covering all modules: fundamentals, databases and storage, scalability, reliability and consistency, case studies, and system design methodology