System Design First Principles Thinking In 60 Minutes

System design interview, software architecture, practical problem solving, thinking beyond coding and memorizing

What you'll learn

Guidelines to approach system design interview discussions sytematically

Build a value oriented conversation instead of canned questions and responses

Learning to build systems and become a first principles thinker

Practice with examples to build a self assessment metric

Requirements

Minimum 1 years programming experience needed.

Willingness to followup on the assignments and complete them sincerely

Description

In this focused, 60-minute course, you'll quickly learn essential strategies for tackling system design interviews and boosting your career prospects. We'll concentrate on the crucial aspects of designing complex systems, emphasizing balancing business fundamentals with technical expertise.The course will cover critical aspects of system design interviews, including understanding the problem domain, product purpose, and interviewer expectations. Through a targeted approach, you'll learn to shape your answers, identify knowledge gaps, and practice using real-world examples, such as designing an AI-powered search engine.We'll explore a conversational approach to system design, helping you engage in productive dialogues with your interviewer. You'll learn to apply your expertise in algorithms, data structures, domain knowledge, and infrastructure to navigate the conversation effectively.Throughout the course, you'll work on hands-on assignments that reinforce your learning:Problem Domain Exploration: Analyze a given problem statement, identify critical components, and draft relevant questions to clarify the requirements.Data Modeling Exercise: Design an appropriate data model for a specific system based on the requirements.Scalability & Performance: Propose a scaling strategy to handle a rapidly growing user base, addressing potential bottlenecks and challenges.Fault Tolerance Considerations: Develop a fault-tolerant system design catering to many concurrent users.MVP Design: Design a minimum viable product for a sample problem, focusing on key features and customer needs.By the end of this 60-minute course, you'll be better equipped to face system design interviews and confidently tackle complex design challenges.

Overview

Section 1: Introduction

Lecture 1 Introduction

Lecture 2 Course Outline

Section 2: System design converstation structure

Lecture 3 Shaping a conversation

Lecture 4 Importance of listening

Lecture 5 States of a system design conversation in an interview

Lecture 6 A primer on shaping system design interview conversations rationally

Section 3: Pivots of a system design discussion

Lecture 7 Introduction to the system design conversation pivots

Lecture 8 Business and use cases as system design interview pivot

Lecture 9 High Level design as pivot of system design interview

Lecture 10 Low level Design and Data model as a pivot of system design interview

Lecture 11 Scale as a pivot of system Design interview

Lecture 12 Fault tolerance as a pivot of system design interview

Lecture 13 Alogrithms and data structures as a pivot in system design interview

Section 4: Business related questions in system design context

Lecture 14 Understand the domain

Lecture 15 Understand the customer requirements upfront

Lecture 16 Gauging market size from system design perspective

Lecture 17 Analyzing the competition from system design perspective

Lecture 18 Understanding the success of leader in a domain for system design metrics

Section 5: Components needed to build a minimum viable product

Lecture 19 Thinking from a minimum viable product perspective

Lecture 20 Functional perspective of the system

Lecture 21 Considerations while designing systems

Section 6: Data management perspective in system design

Lecture 22 Data Access perspective

Lecture 23 Data modelling and schema design

Lecture 24 Data, communication protocols and Low level design

Lecture 25 System design storage considerations

Lecture 26 System design caching considerations

Section 7: Scale considerations in system design perspective

Lecture 27 Load Balancer considerations

Lecture 28 Concurrency as a consideration while scaling

Lecture 29 Performance and scale

Lecture 30 Scale and scalability

Lecture 31 Error Handling

Lecture 32 Capacity planning

Section 8: Fault Tolerance perspective in system design interviews

Lecture 33 Recovery in system design

Lecture 34 Fault Tolerance from system design interview perspective

Lecture 35 Redundancy in system design interview

Lecture 36 Availability in system design conversation

Section 9: Algorithms and data structures in system design

Lecture 37 Data strucutres

Lecture 38 Algorithms in system design

Lecture 39 Basic techniques for using algorithms in system design

Section 10: How to upskill and learn during hectic schedules?

Lecture 40 Self learning is the key to growth.

Lecture 41 Getting to know the tool chains

Lecture 42 Mastering debugging

Lecture 43 Learn to debug effectively

Lecture 44 Getting used to analyzing network traffic

Lecture 45 Dive deep into performance

Lecture 46 Learn to simulate and reproduce error

Lecture 47 Learn to measure the cloud metrics

Lecture 48 Start isolating protocol specific network traffic

Lecture 49 Learn reverse engineering designs of products

Lecture 50 Publish your learnings

Lecture 51 Stay curious and keep learning

Section 11: Conclusion

Lecture 52 [Bonus Lecture]

Beginner developers seeking a job change in near future,Beginners curious about the system design interview,Developers eager to understand system design in general,Developers willing to apply knowledge to their current job for career growth