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// System Design Mastery
Zero to Master
The complete roadmap for software engineers
8
Levels
15+
Real Systems
∞
Scale
01
Foundations
Beginner
How the internet works — DNS, HTTP, proxies, CDN, load balancing.
DNS Resolution
HTTP/HTTPS
CDN
Load Balancer
Forward Proxy
Reverse Proxy
02
Scalability
Beginner
From 100 users to 100M — scaling strategies and distributed systems theory.
Vertical vs Horizontal
CAP Theorem
Consistency Models
Rate Limiting
Back-of-envelope
03
Databases
Intermediate
SQL vs NoSQL, replication, sharding, and picking the right storage layer.
SQL vs NoSQL
Replication
Sharding
Consistent Hashing
Indexing
ACID vs BASE
04
Caching
Intermediate
The fastest code is no code — cache everything possible at every layer.
Cache-Aside
Write-Through
Write-Back
LRU / LFU
Redis
Cache Stampede
05
Messaging & Events
Intermediate
Decouple services with async messaging, queues, and event streaming.
Message Queues
Apache Kafka
Pub/Sub
Saga Pattern
CQRS
Event Sourcing
06
Microservices
Advanced
Break the monolith into services — and handle the distributed systems complexity that follows.
API Gateway
Service Discovery
Circuit Breaker
Service Mesh
gRPC
Sidecar Pattern
07
Real-World Systems
Advanced
Design Twitter, Uber, WhatsApp, Netflix from scratch using everything above.
URL Shortener
Twitter Feed
Uber Matching
WhatsApp Chat
Netflix Streaming
Dropbox
08
Interview Mastery
Advanced
Structured interview approach, templates, common mistakes, and trade-off language.
8-Step Framework
API Design
Trade-off Language
Common Mistakes
Mock Interviews
🏗️ Real Systems to Master
Select any system to explore the full design
🔗
URL Shortener
Start here. Base62 encoding, redirects, click analytics.
Beginner
Hashing
Redis
🐦
Twitter / Feed
Fan-out problem, timelines, celebrity hybrid model.
Intermediate
Kafka
Cassandra
💬
WhatsApp
WebSockets, delivery receipts, group fan-out, E2E encryption.
Advanced
WebSocket
Signal
🚗
Uber
Geospatial matching, surge pricing, real-time location.
Advanced
GeoHash
Redis GEO
🎬
Netflix
Video encoding, CDN, recommendation engine, A/B testing.
Advanced
CDN
HLS
📁
Dropbox
File chunking, sync conflict resolution, block storage.
Intermediate
S3
Delta sync