Intro/interviews

Question 1

What is system design?

Answer 1

System design is the process of designing components and its integration, APIs and data models into a large scale system that meets a specified set of functional and non-functional requirements.

Question 2

What are the three main domains of system design

Answer 2

1. Computer networking
2. Parallel computing
3. Distributed systems

Question 3

How many building blocks for system design are there?

Answer 3

16

Question 4

How should you cover a system design interview?

Answer 4

1. Ask refining questions to understand direct and indirect requirements
2. Scope to be able to cover in 30-40mins, including data (size/rate/consistency/privacy) and discuss components
3. Discuss all the trade offs in the system and engage the interviewer

Question 5

Why do we not design systems capable of handling more work?

Answer 5

Cost, we want to efficiently utilize resources

Question 6

What are the system designers responsibility?

Answer 6

1. Provide fault tolerance (ability to operate when 1+ components fail) at design level as almost all modern systems use off-the-shelf components.
2. Use mature SW principals: 1/ robustness (maintain ops during crisis), 2/ scalability 3/ availability 4/ performance 5/ extensibility 6/ resilience (return to normal)

Question 7

How to learn system design?

Answer 7

1. Learn how popular apps work
2. Understand and ask why a component was used vs another
3. Build serious projects
4. Get familiar with processes and details
   Less about mechanics and more about trade offs