Goal: Learn the infrastructure building blocks that every system design answer needs, pair it with NoSQL knowledge, and start conquering graph algorithms.
Topics
| Day | Focus | Topics |
|---|---|---|
| Mon | HLD Networking | DNS and How the Internet Works · Load Balancers · Proxies and Reverse Proxies |
| Tue | HLD Caching & CDN | Caching · Content Delivery Networks · Message Queues |
| Wed | DBMS NoSQL | Document Stores · Key-Value Stores |
| Thu | DBMS Data Modeling | NoSQL Data Modeling · Choosing the Right Database |
| Fri | DSA Graphs | Tries · Graph Representations · BFS and DFS |
Key Concepts
- L4 vs L7 load balancing — when you need protocol awareness and when raw throughput wins
- Cache invalidation strategies — write-through, write-behind, and cache-aside patterns
- Pub/sub vs message queue — fan-out vs exactly-once processing, and when to use each
- When to use MongoDB vs Redis vs PostgreSQL — there’s no universal answer, only tradeoffs
- Adjacency list vs adjacency matrix — space/time tradeoffs for sparse vs dense graphs
- BFS for shortest path (unweighted) vs DFS for exploration and cycle detection
Practice
- Draw the architecture of any website you use daily — identify the LB, cache, CDN, and queue layers
- Pick 3 real apps and justify which database type (document, key-value, relational) fits best
- Implement BFS and DFS on a graph — both iterative and recursive
- Build a Trie and implement autocomplete search
~13 topics · ~1.5-2 hrs/day · Focus: read the linked notes, then code each concept