LEARNING PATH · Systems & Backend
Level Up as a Backend Engineer
For backend engineers going deeper on distributed systems.
The distributed-systems fundamentals, then the systems that put them to work — a key-value store, a cache, a message queue, an ID generator — with tools to build the intuition.
- Reason about replication, partitioning and coordination
- Choose consistency and quorum settings deliberately
- Recognize the same primitives across very different systems
0 / 8 done · 0%
The System Design Fundamentals Handbook
Ground the vocabulary first.
Partitioning, Sharding & Replication
Scaling data across machines.
Concurrency, Locks & Isolation Levels
Correctness under contention.
Consensus, Transactions & Coordination
How nodes agree.
Design a Key-Value Store
Replication + consistency, designed.
Design a Distributed Cache
Sharding and eviction at scale.
Design a Message Queue
Durable, replayable messaging.
Design an ID Generator
Unique IDs without coordination bottlenecks.
Quorum (N/R/W) Explorer
Tune N/R/W and feel the trade-off.
Availability (Nines) Calculator
Turn nines into real downtime.