System Design

I wrote this because I kept struggling with system design books that felt like 50% jargon and 50% filler.

I learn best when concepts are explained plainly, with clear examples and a focus on what actually matters.

So I did what I always end up doing: I rewrote the material for myself - cut the noise, kept the useful parts, and organised it into a book.

This ebook is the result: a clear, no-fluff walkthrough of system design from foundations to intermediate ideas, written in plain language and grounded in real-life analogies that actually map to the technical concepts.

It covers topics such as traffic and load, load balancing, queues and backpressure, caching and spikes, databases and data correctness, scaling data, distributed consistency, reliability under failure, observability, security basics, and safe shipping practices.

It does assume you have some basic familiarity with coding and software - this isn’t “what is an app?” - but you don’t need prior system design experience. If you’ve never formally learned system design before, the book is built to take you from “I sort of get it” to “I can reason about tradeoffs and design choices without guessing”.

I made this mainly because I needed it. If you learn the same way I do - if you’re allergic to fluff and tired of feeling like tutorials are wasting your time - this is for you.