System Design Quick Guide

Source: Dev.to

Why does it matter?

• ✅ Big tech interviews are incomplete without system design
• ✅ Real‑world systems break if you ignore concepts like latency, replication, or retries
• ✅ Whether you’re working on backend, infra, or cloud, system design is the glue that holds your solution together

Core Sections

Core Concepts

From CAP theorem to vertical vs. horizontal scaling.

Key Components & Tools

Load balancers, databases, object stores, CDN, containers, service mesh.

Reliability & Fault Tolerance

Health checks, chaos testing, retries, failover logic.

Monitoring & Observability

Tracing, logging, metrics, dashboards.

Design Patterns

Circuit breaker, BFF, bulkhead, event‑driven flows.

You’ll also find foundational system terms like rate limiting, cold start, session stickiness, service discovery, and more — all mapped for clarity.

Who is this for?

• Developers preparing for interviews
• Tech leads managing architecture
• Anyone transitioning to system design

This guide will help you think better, build smarter, and scale with confidence.