About Us
The System Design is a blog about how large software systems are designed, built and kept running. We break down the ideas behind the apps people use every day, such as caching, sharding, message queues, consistency and load balancing, so you can reason about them clearly in an interview or at work.
What you’ll find here
- System design interview guides: step-by-step walkthroughs of classic questions like a URL shortener, a chat app or a news feed, from requirements to trade-offs.
- Core concepts, explained properly: the building blocks of distributed systems, with diagrams and simple back-of-the-envelope maths.
- Real-world architecture breakdowns: how well-known products solve scaling problems, based on their public engineering blogs, talks and papers.
- Practical trade-offs: when to pick one database, queue or caching strategy over another, and why.
How we write
- Start with requirements. Every design begins with the problem and the numbers, not with a list of technologies.
- Make trade-offs explicit. There is rarely one right answer, so we explain what you gain and what you give up.
- Draw it. Each article includes original diagrams made for this Site.
- Cite sources. Claims about real systems link to the engineering blog, paper or talk they come from.
- Keep it current. We revisit articles when tools and best practices change, and we fix errors as soon as they are reported.
Who writes it
The System Design is written and edited by Gowtham. Every article is reviewed before it is published.
Get in touch
Found a mistake, have a topic you’d like covered or want to collaborate? We’d love to hear from you on our Contact page.
You can also follow along on X at @thesystemdesign and on Pinterest for cheat sheets and diagrams.