Distributed Systems Learning Path

Distributed systems fail in partial and surprising ways. This path moves from consistency vocabulary through replication and coordination into practical messaging and multi-region concerns, using the catalog’s existing deep dives rather than shallow summaries.

Audience: Backend engineers owning multi-service or multi-region systems.

Curriculum

1. System Design Foundations — How Large Software Fits Together
2. CAP Theorem — Consistency, Availability, and Partition Tolerance
3. CAP, Consistency & Idempotency
4. Consistency Models — From Strong to Eventual
5. Strong vs Eventual Consistency — Trade-offs in Distributed Systems
6. Data Replication — Keeping Copies in Sync
7. Quorum Reads vs Quorum Writes
8. Distributed Locks and Consensus — Coordinating Without a Single Boss Memory
9. Transactional Outbox and Saga Patterns — Reliable Multi-Step Work
10. Exactly-Once Processing vs Practical Deduplication
11. Message Queues — Hand Work Off Without Blocking the User
12. Multi-Region Failover — Surviving a Region Outage
13. Active-Active Conflict Resolution — CRDTs and Vector Clocks

By Shubham Jain. Last reviewed 2026-07-15.

Shubham Jain · Learning Lab