KNOWLEDGE BASE
System Design Notes
A reference library that reads like a course. Short, evergreen notes on system design concepts ordered from basics to advanced, with real trade-offs from systems like Kafka, Redis, and PostgreSQL.
DEFINITION FIRST
The first sentence answers "what is it". No throat-clearing.
TRADE-OFFS WITH REAL NUMBERS
Every note has a trade-off table and a "when NOT to use it" section.
REVIEWED, NOT ABANDONED
Every claim is checked against primary sources and re-verified.
TOPICS · basics → advanced
Fundamentals
CAP theorem, consistency models, latency numbers, and estimation skills that everything else builds on.
Caching & Load Distribution
Cache strategies, invalidation, consistent hashing, load balancing, and CDN architecture.
Databases
SQL vs NoSQL, indexing internals, sharding, replication, and choosing the right database.
Messaging & Event Streaming
Kafka, message queues, event sourcing, and the patterns that make async systems reliable.