Archive - SystemDesignLaws

Real-time Updates

- Real-time systems need two hops: server to client (WebSockets, SSE, long polling) and source to server (Pub/Su...

Mar 16 • Jimmy Malhan

Multi-step Processes

- Multi-step processes fail halfway: payment charged but inventory not reserved. Use workflow engines like Tempo...

Mar 16 • Jimmy Malhan

Dealing with Contention

- Fix race conditions with atomicity, locks, or optimistic concurrency. Scale to distributed coordination when m...

Mar 16 • Jimmy Malhan

Caching for System Design Interviews

- Caching cuts latency 50x and reduces DB load by 95%+. Cache-aside with Redis is the default. Layer CDN for glo...

Mar 16 • Jimmy Malhan

Managing Long-Running Tasks

- When a task takes more than a few seconds, do not make the client wait. Accept the request immediately (return...

Mar 16 • Jimmy Malhan

Handling Large Blobs

- Files should never pass through your application server. Use presigned URLs for direct upload to object storag...

Mar 16 • Jimmy Malhan

- Scale writes in four tiers: vertical scaling with write-optimized databases, sharding to spread load, queues a...

Mar 16 • Jimmy Malhan

- Reads dominate writes 100:1. Scale in three tiers: optimize the database (indexing, denormalization), scale ho...

Mar 16 • Jimmy Malhan

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