Wrapping Up the Building Blocks Discussion
Explore the transition from foundational distributed systems components to a full-scale System Design application. Apply your knowledge of building blocks to tackle twenty complex, real-world design challenges, including YouTube, Uber, and WhatsApp.
We'll cover the following...
The previous chapters introduced two sets of building blocks: the distributed-systems components, such as load balancers, databases, caches, and queues, and the AI components, such as models, retrieval, RAG and agents, model serving, and evaluation. The next chapters apply both to concrete design problems, from classic systems that gain AI features to systems where AI is the core of the product. These designs assume familiarity with the building blocks and their trade-offs.
What’s next?
We will study the following systems:
The first eighteen are classic systems, some of which gain AI features, such as conversational video discovery in YouTube. The last four are AI-native systems, where the AI building blocks are the core of the design. Every design follows the RESHADED approach, which the next lesson introduces.
Each design can be read independently, but the chapters are structured to build on one another. Some case studies introduce background concepts that are reused in later designs. For example, the Google Maps case study provides context for the Uber System Design.
We have also included the “Lessons from System Failures” chapter, in which we discuss how minor errors led to significant failures in some of the most successful systems. At the end, we have provided free resources, including System Design interview guides and case studies, to help you prepare for your upcoming interviews.