EVERY system design skill you should learn, IN ORDER

Summary

Key Points

• The primary difference between a coder and a software engineer lies in the engineer's ability to design systems, a skill that is becoming increasingly valuable. 0:10
• RESTful APIs are fundamental and should be prioritized over alternatives like GraphQL for most applications. 0:51
• Microservices, while offering development velocity for large teams, are not recommended for solo developers or personal projects and are being moved away from by some companies. 1:38
• Object storage (like S3) is essential for storing files and images, is cost-effective, durable, and should be understood by all developers. 3:10
• Queues are crucial for handling asynchronous workloads and buffering spiky traffic, making them an underrated but important system design component. 3:34
• Load balancers are critical for horizontal scaling, enabling applications to handle massive traffic by distributing requests across multiple servers. 4:00
• REST APIs are a foundational concept in software engineering, essential for building and interacting with applications. 4:24
• Content Delivery Networks (CDNs) are vital for serving static data efficiently, reducing latency, and often saving costs by caching content closer to users. 5:00
• Databases are a core requirement for nearly every application to persistently store data, with PostgreSQL being a recommended starting point. 5:12
• Understanding monitoring is paramount for any system, allowing developers to identify and address issues proactively rather than waiting for user complaints. 6:05
• Continuous Integration and Continuous Deployment (CI/CD) are essential for shipping code quickly and reliably, directly impacting a company's revenue and reducing bugs. 6:48
• Containers (like Docker) are highly beneficial for deployment, scaling, and testing, simplifying many aspects of software development. 7:27