🧠 Article Summary: System Design Was HARD Until I Learned These 30 Concepts

Shikhil shares a comprehensive breakdown of 30 foundational system design concepts that helped him land offers from top tech companies and build scalable systems over 8+ years. The article is structured as a progressive learning path—from basic networking to advanced architectural patterns.

🔗 Networking & Communication

• Client-Server Architecture: The backbone of web apps—clients send requests, servers respond.

• IP Address & DNS: How clients locate servers using domain names mapped to IPs.

• Proxy & Reverse Proxy: Middle layers for security, load balancing, and request routing.

• Latency: Physical distance impacts speed; CDNs and global deployments help.

📡 Protocols & APIs

• HTTP/HTTPS: Request-response model with headers, bodies, and status codes.

• REST vs GraphQL: REST is resource-based; GraphQL allows flexible queries.

• WebSockets: Persistent connections for real-time communication.

🧱 Infrastructure & Scaling

• Load Balancing: Distributes traffic across servers to prevent overload.

• Caching: Reduces latency and server load using memory-based storage.

• CDNs: Serve static content from edge locations to reduce latency.

• Rate Limiting: Prevents abuse by capping requests per user/IP.

🧠 Data & Storage

• SQL vs NoSQL: Structured vs flexible schema; relational vs document-based.

• Sharding & Replication: Horizontal scaling and fault tolerance.

• CAP Theorem: Trade-offs between consistency, availability, and partition tolerance.

🔐 Security & Reliability

• Authentication & Authorization: Identity verification and access control.

• OAuth & JWT: Token-based auth for secure, stateless sessions.

• Circuit Breakers & Retries: Resilience patterns for fault-tolerant systems.

🛠 Architecture Patterns

• Microservices vs Monoliths: Decentralized vs unified codebases.

• Event-Driven Architecture: Async communication via events and queues.

• Message Brokers: Kafka, RabbitMQ for decoupled service communication.

• Service Discovery: Dynamic routing in distributed systems.

📊 Monitoring & Observability

• Logging, Metrics, Tracing: Visibility into system health and performance.

• Health Checks: Automated probes to detect service failures.

✨ Why It’s Valuable

Shikhil doesn’t just list concepts—he explains them with visuals, analogies, and links to deeper articles. It’s a roadmap for anyone preparing for system design interviews or building production-grade systems.