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aquarhead's review against another edition
2.0
Pretty lackluster. Seriously, just read DDIA [b:Designing Data-Intensive Applications|23463279|Designing Data-Intensive Applications|Martin Kleppmann|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1415816873l/23463279._SX50_.jpg|43055831] instead.
liana_bakradze's review against another edition
5.0
Reread it for my system design interviews. Still the best book for prep.
zkendall's review against another edition
3.0
Very accessible. Decently fun to read and think about, though the examples could/should be much more complicated. Lots of typos (Self published). Sometimes strange what is focused on for a given chapter. If you look up the footnotes, sometimes entire chapters are a repackaging of a small number of other peoples' blog posts. It's fine for what it is, but there's a lot of room for a better option. This is the post popular of the species, but maybe it was just the first; it appears that a number of other similar books have come out since.
pallethechu's review against another edition
4.0
I'll increase or decrease this based on the results of my next interview
ohheyitsalexis's review against another edition
4.0
Overall... I liked it, though I think maybe I'd put at a 3.5 that I rounded? It's a good walkthrough of the typical systems design questions, and they are ordered in a way that scaled pretty nicely (start simple and working your way up to examples that are so complex they depend on earlier topics.) Sometimes it's not quite detailed enough, sometimes it gets a little too into the weeds. It's also a very short read, so not hard to get through at all, and honestly just a great example of scalable architecture even if you're not planning to interview anywhere (with lots of linked documentation to explain how big companies approached it.)
One tiny note: it's a little off to me that a book published in 2020 still uses master/slave. I mean even my hardprint copy of Designing Data-Intensive Applications from 4 years ago uses leader/follower, and if that doesn't quite capture the nuance you're looking for there's primary/secondary, primary/replica, master/replica, etc, etc, etc.
One tiny note: it's a little off to me that a book published in 2020 still uses master/slave. I mean even my hardprint copy of Designing Data-Intensive Applications from 4 years ago uses leader/follower, and if that doesn't quite capture the nuance you're looking for there's primary/secondary, primary/replica, master/replica, etc, etc, etc.
henrik_w's review against another edition
4.0
This book is written specifically to prepare for the "system design"-part of a software developer interview. I bought and read it for that that purpose when I went through interviews this spring. I found it quite helpful for this.
Some typical chapter titles are: "Deisgn a unique ID generator in distributed systems", "Design a URL shortener", "Design a chat system". Each chapter goes through the technical challenges, the components needed, possible solutions, capacity calculations and reference articles. There are quite a few diagrams throughout. Later chapters will use some of the earlier chapters as part of the solution (which is good).
The content is good, but the book has a "self-published" feel to it. This doesn't matter too much, since I am not aware of any other books that cover the same topic.
Some typical chapter titles are: "Deisgn a unique ID generator in distributed systems", "Design a URL shortener", "Design a chat system". Each chapter goes through the technical challenges, the components needed, possible solutions, capacity calculations and reference articles. There are quite a few diagrams throughout. Later chapters will use some of the earlier chapters as part of the solution (which is good).
The content is good, but the book has a "self-published" feel to it. This doesn't matter too much, since I am not aware of any other books that cover the same topic.