System Design

APIs & Communication

Services don't exist in isolation. Master how they talk to each other.

Transport, HTTP & TLS

HTTP Request Lifecycle
HTTP/1.1 vs HTTP/2 vs HTTP/3
TLS Handshake, PKI & Certificate Validation
Connection Management & Reuse
Edge Optimization: TLS Termination, CDN & Edge Caching
CDN Content Strategy: Static, Dynamic & S3 Origins
CDN Advanced: TTL Optimization, Provider Internals & Edge Compute

API Design Principles

REST API Design Best Practices
API Versioning Strategies
Pagination, Filtering & Query Design
Error Handling & Response Design

API Protocols & Patterns

REST vs GraphQL Trade-offs
gRPC & Protocol Buffers
WebSockets & Real-Time Communication
API Protocol Selection

Asynchronous Communication

Message Queues Fundamentals
Pub/Sub vs Point-to-Point Messaging
Event-Driven Architecture Patterns
Webhooks & Callback Patterns
Kafka Internals: Partitions, Replication & Log Compaction
10 min
Advanced Messaging Patterns: Backpressure, Monitoring & Schema Evolution
10 min

API Security & Reliability

Authentication (OAuth, JWT, API Keys)
Idempotency & Retry Safety
API Gateway Patterns
API Reliability Patterns
Gateway Auth, Rate Limiting & Request Control
Gateway Observability & Deployment Strategies
SWE Quiz - Master System Design & ML Interviews