Building Blocks
System Design From Scratch — Test Yourself: 20 Questions
A review post for the six-floor foundation series .None of these are "define X." They're scenarios and traps
Building Blocks
Building Blocks
System Design From Scratch — Floor 5: The Patterns and the One Tension
Sixth and final post in the foundation series. We've built the whole stack, bottom to top (Floors 0–4). This floor is the meta-floor: the everyday patterns engineers assemble from these blocks, and the single tension that runs through every one of them.
System Design
System Design From Scratch — Floor 3: How Data Survives a Crash
Fourth post in the series. We can move data reliably between machines (Floor 2). Now: once data arrives, how do you store it so it survives a crash, a power cut, a reboot? This is where the word durability finally gets a precise, physical meaning.
Building Blocks
System Design From Scratch — Floor 4: When One Machine Isn't Enough
Fifth post in the series. We can store data durably on one machine. But one machine is a single point of failure, and it has a capacity ceiling. This floor goes wide — and it's the floor the whole distributed world stands on.
System Design
System Design From Scratch — Floor 2: How Machines Talk to Each Other
Third post in the series. Floor 0 taught us the network is the slow shelf. Floor 1 squeezed everything out of one machine. This floor is where single-machine thinking ends and distributed thinking begins — and it's where a lot of engineers quietly get things wrong.
Building Blocks
System Design From Scratch — Floor 1: What One Machine Can (and Can't) Do
Second post in the series. Floor 0 taught us that some data is far away and slow to reach. This floor asks the question that follows: while you're stuck waiting for something slow, what should you actually be doing?
System Design
System Design From Scratch — Floor 0: Why Anything Is Fast or Slow
The first post in a series where I build system-design intuition from the ground up. No jargon dumped on you up front — we start with an everyday situation, reason it out, and only then attach the technical name.