Level 0: Orientation & prerequisites · L0.0 Welcome: what system design is and how to learn it here
What system design is (no jargon)
Explain in plain words what a system is, why an app that works for a few people can break for millions, and what a system designer decides.
12 min · Free
What you take away
- A system is the app you see plus everything behind it: the computers that do the work, the places where data is kept, the network between them and the people who run them.
- Apps break at scale because many people arrive at the same moment, and one computer can only do so much at once.
- A system designer decides where data lives, what happens when something fails, how the system grows and what it costs.
- These decisions are what senior, architect and AI roles are hired and interviewed for.
How the class is laid out
- The problem
- The simple version
- Why 10 people is easy and 10 million is hard
- What a system designer actually decides
- Why it matters for your career
- Where this course takes you
- Check your understanding