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System Design Interview
Volume One Review | Alex Xu
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Premise
System Design Interview is a short guide that goes through increasingly difficult system design problems that a developer may be asked in interviews.
The Good
I read this as a passenger on a road trip to Virginia, and I think the information is delivered in a fantastic way for any developer to pick up and incrementally learn the basics of system design.
I particularly liked the balance the author walked between detail in the diagrams and not bogging the reader down with the more minute details of system design, which I think makes this book a fantastic entry point for software developers looking to get more into system design.
It does a pretty good job of discussing trade-offs with implementation solutions as well, something I feel a lot of software developers (especially looking more towards the Junior level) struggle with.
The Bad
In a direct contradiction to what I said above, there were times reading through it that I (currently with around 6 years experience in the field and a good amount of experience as a technical lead on projects) felt like I could have answered the question to a 75-85% accuracy without having read the book at all.
In this, the book felt a little simplistic, more complicated concepts were often handwaved away as "we won't dive into that in this book", but oftentimes they were fairly important concepts to consider when designing the types of systems it was asking for.
Final Thoughts
For anyone with a few years of experience in the field, I think this book is a great pick up. It lays a very solid foundation for system design skills that are highly relevant and will continue to be highly relevant for the foreseeable future. I think even for more experienced developers, it's still a decent read to refresh their baseline for potential future interviews - but don't expect to learn anything perspective changing from it.
System Design Interview is a short guide that goes through increasingly difficult system design problems that a developer may be asked in interviews.
The Good
I read this as a passenger on a road trip to Virginia, and I think the information is delivered in a fantastic way for any developer to pick up and incrementally learn the basics of system design.
I particularly liked the balance the author walked between detail in the diagrams and not bogging the reader down with the more minute details of system design, which I think makes this book a fantastic entry point for software developers looking to get more into system design.
It does a pretty good job of discussing trade-offs with implementation solutions as well, something I feel a lot of software developers (especially looking more towards the Junior level) struggle with.
The Bad
In a direct contradiction to what I said above, there were times reading through it that I (currently with around 6 years experience in the field and a good amount of experience as a technical lead on projects) felt like I could have answered the question to a 75-85% accuracy without having read the book at all.
In this, the book felt a little simplistic, more complicated concepts were often handwaved away as "we won't dive into that in this book", but oftentimes they were fairly important concepts to consider when designing the types of systems it was asking for.
Final Thoughts
For anyone with a few years of experience in the field, I think this book is a great pick up. It lays a very solid foundation for system design skills that are highly relevant and will continue to be highly relevant for the foreseeable future. I think even for more experienced developers, it's still a decent read to refresh their baseline for potential future interviews - but don't expect to learn anything perspective changing from it.
more brain dumps await!
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