GitHub – system-design-primer: Learn how to design large-scale systems
1–10 of 22 posts
Re: GitHub – system-design-primer: Learn how to design large-scale systems
#2Meta comment:
We have come to very narrow definition of a 'system' when using terms like system design, system architect, etc., which here seems to mean a distributed computer system. That, as compared to a more open-ended definition found on, say, Wikipedia [1]. What about biological systems like a cell or a human body, a road system, a sound system, ...
Re: GitHub – system-design-primer: Learn how to design large-scale systems
#3Meta comment: We have come to very narrow definition of a 'system' when using terms like system design, system architect, etc., which here seems to mean a distributed computer system. That, as compared to a more open-ended definition found on, say, Wikipedia [1]. What about biological systems like a cell or a human body, a road system, a sound system, ... [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/System
Working in the automotive sector, I find it even worse. Sometimes “system” means an ECU (e.g. a radar sensor), sometimes the whole car, sometimes even includes infrastructure (cloud, other cars, etc). Sometimes it is just a software component within an ECU (e.g. the operating system).
If I could I would taboo the term. It conveys practically zero information at this point.
Re: GitHub – system-design-primer: Learn how to design large-scale systems
#4Slightly confusingly, this is nothing to do with GitHub's Primer design system.
Re: GitHub – system-design-primer: Learn how to design large-scale systems
#5the Google NALSD guides are also worth reading for concrete-ising these sort of designs, too. there's some stuff in the SRE Workbook: https://sre.google/workbook/non-abstract-design/ and much more online.
Re: GitHub – system-design-primer: Learn how to design large-scale systems
#6This thing has 233k stars. I dare to say, without evidence, that the vast majority of devs does not know what e.g. the CAP theorem is——and they’ll never need it. The vast majority of “systems” are small-scale. Who’s this massive audience?
Re: GitHub – system-design-primer: Learn how to design large-scale systems
#7This thing has 233k stars. I dare to say, without evidence, that the vast majority of devs does not know what e.g. the CAP theorem is——and they’ll never need it. The vast majority of “systems” are small-scale. Who’s this massive audience?
People who live for short tenured stays at FAANG companies and optimize their time and skills exclusively for interviews?
Re: GitHub – system-design-primer: Learn how to design large-scale systems
#8This thing has 233k stars. I dare to say, without evidence, that the vast majority of devs does not know what e.g. the CAP theorem is——and they’ll never need it. The vast majority of “systems” are small-scale. Who’s this massive audience?
Still seems quite high, but I imagine a lot of tech founders reach for tools like this if they've not been tasked with designing full systems before.
Re: GitHub – system-design-primer: Learn how to design large-scale systems
#9I fundamentally distrust these sort of guides. It was brought home reading something on the google SRE book - basically they talked about how google started with two data centres and a bunch of python scripts as automation.
Did they do "up-front" design? Of course. Did they get it horribly wrong at times ? of course.
but the large working system evolved from a small working system.
Thinking you can cunningly plan a future system to hang together like some giant zipper with pieces as yet to be built pulling together perfectly is ludicrous.
Re: GitHub – system-design-primer: Learn how to design large-scale systems
#10This thing has 233k stars. I dare to say, without evidence, that the vast majority of devs does not know what e.g. the CAP theorem is——and they’ll never need it. The vast majority of “systems” are small-scale. Who’s this massive audience?
I would guess that it's probably aspirational to some degree. People hope to work with larger systems.
Personally I think it looks interesting and I work at a small web agency. We usually only work with a few parts of these kinds of systems, but occasionally we have clients like a large sports ticket vendor, where a few more of these patterns are helpful.