What is this?
A free, curated collection of System Design resources: core concepts, networking and API fundamentals, database and caching basics, distributed systems patterns, and a huge list of interview problems, books, courses, and papers — all aimed at prepping for System Design interviews.
Is this a tutorial, a tool, or just a list of links?
It is an awesome-list style curated index: a single README organized into topic sections with bullet points linking out to articles, videos, courses, and papers rather than original written content.
How is the list organized?
It is grouped into sections like Core Concepts, Networking Fundamentals, API Fundamentals, Database and Caching Fundamentals, Distributed Systems, Architectural Patterns, Tradeoffs, and then System Design Interview Problems split into Easy, Medium, and Hard, followed by Courses, Books, and Must-Read Papers.
Where should a beginner start?
The README points new readers to a dedicated intro article before diving into the concept lists, and recommends tackling interview problems from Easy to Hard order.
Who is this list for?
Software engineers preparing for System Design interviews, from beginners learning core concepts to candidates practicing full design problems like Uber or Netflix.
What kind of interview problems does it cover?
Dozens of classic design prompts split by difficulty, including a URL shortener and rate limiter (Easy), WhatsApp, Netflix, and Twitter (Medium), and Uber, Google Docs, and Google Maps (Hard).
Does it include anything beyond articles?
Yes — it also links to full courses, a newsletter, a recommended book (Designing Data-Intensive Applications), YouTube channels, and classic distributed systems papers like the Google File System and Dynamo.
Are there engineering case studies from real companies?
Yes, a Must-Read Engineering Articles section links to posts like how Discord stores trillions of messages, Airbnb's double-payment prevention, and Slack's real-time messaging architecture.
Why is the primary language listed as Java?
The repo's own content is just markdown links with no code; the Java label likely comes from an unrelated or minimal file in the repo rather than actual implementation code.
What are similar projects?
system-design-academy, system-design, awesome-scalability, architect-awesome, awesome-software-architecture, professional-programming, Back-End-Developer-Interview-Questions, awesome-system-design
Which topics is it in?
load-balancer, scalability, nosql, system-design, interview-questions, caching, interview, architecture, microservices, career, computer-science, sql