System Design Learning Path

System design is the craft of choosing trade-offs under real constraints: latency, durability, cost, and team topology. This pillar organizes existing Learning Lab articles into a coherent sequence so you build vocabulary first, then mechanisms, then production judgment—not a random inventory of interview questions.

Audience: Backend engineers preparing for design interviews or production architecture work.

Curriculum

1. SLIs, SLOs, and Error Budgets
2. Capacity Planning for Backend Services
3. Tail Latency and Load Shedding
4. Production-Readiness Reviews (PRRs)
5. System Design Foundations — The Core Building Blocks
6. Availability — Nines, Error Budgets, and Redundancy
7. Reliability — Correct Results Under Stress
8. Scalability — Vertical, Horizontal, and Elastic Growth
9. Latency vs Throughput vs Bandwidth
10. CAP Theorem
11. Fault Tolerance — Keep Working When Parts Fail
12. Load Balancing — Algorithms and Layers
13. SQL vs NoSQL — Choosing a Data Store
14. Database Indexes — Speed Reads Without Blind Scans
15. Data Replication
16. Caching 101
17. Message Queues
18. Idempotency for APIs — Safe Retries Without Double Side Effects

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

Shubham Jain · Learning Lab