System Design Interview – An insider’s guide

3.799,00 EGP

Description

Price: $37.99
(as of Dec 26,2024 19:33:37 UTC – Details)


Customers say

Customers find the book provides a good explanation of system design concepts with good level of description. They find it easy to read and helpful for system design interviews. The content is described as decent, well-structured, and enjoyable. Readers appreciate the diagrams and design ideas provided. However, some feel the book lacks depth and depth in certain topics. Opinions differ on the information quality, with some finding it useful and others feeling it’s shallow or hasty.

AI-generated from the text of customer reviews

This Post Has 8 Comments

  1. Top-notch content, but not sufficient as sole resource. I’ll provide some more.
    The book is pretty good. It’s easy to read. There are lots of design diagrams. If you are a visual person, you will love the book. It helped me pass the system design round at FANG.I read the book twice and take notes. I read all the reference materials mentioned in the book. Reading those extra materials help me a lot with topics I’m not familiar with.Highlights:+ The book has a good set of questions.+ Lots of diagrams and clear explanation.+ You will learn something new by reading the book regardless of your experience.Drawbacks:- I wish the reference links are footnotes instead of being at the end of chapters. That way, it’s more accessible.- Some topics are not talked about too much like security and stream processing.- It’s tailored towards junior and semi-senior engineers. Some chapters are not deep enough. For example, I wish the author would talk more about feed ranking and caching in the designing news feed chapter.Overall, it’s a masterpiece in system design books. However, no book can cover everything in system design. No one knows every system. Here are some of my other recommendations:– designing data-intensive applications. Highly recommended.– system design primer github repo. Highly recommended free resource.– Leetcode discussion forum about system designs.– Grokking the system interview course. This is an ok resource but not very deep.– Various youtube channels. I like channels like Tushar Roy, System Design Interview, Success in Tech, etc. There are a lot more but I found them most useful for senior engineer positions.– Various tech blogs: Facebook, Netflix, Uber, AirBnb, etc. Those tech blogs are extremely valuable to help us understand real-life systems.– highscalability website. The website contains lots of real world systems.– InfoQ youtube channel. Many tech companies talk about how they scale their systems at infoQ. I find sometimes it’s quite hard to find useful videos on google but when I narrow down it to a specific channel, it’s much easier to find. For example, I found a lot of useful tech talks about uber there. It’s invaluable when I interviewed there.

  2. Elegant and well thought!
    It is the best book that discusses the system design so far!I read a few posts from other people, and I think those comments do not really reflect the author’s true intent. The author was trying to provide a generic way of how to approach the design issues and provided some classic design patterns. The book is very well organized. In the first few chapters, it tells you the common ways to scale the system and then gradually dive into deeper to show some fundamental concepts and practical ways of how a distributed system should be built. For example, Consistent Hashing is the foundation and has been used so many places, Alex explained very well. Then he discussed how to efficiently compare the nodes and how to detect the temp and permanent failures and recover from the failure. Yes, some of the content can be considered as “borrowed” from the paper, but Alex put them together in a very nice and easy way and save you a lot of questions and time. I read the original paper and still get inspired by the book. Another example is the Youtube chapter, Alex used some concepts from facebook paper. But we have to appreciate that he understood the content and put into such an easy way that you don’t need to spend a day to read facebook paper and still only 60% understanding.You also need to think of the first eight chapters are the building blocks of the distributed system, and they are the real challenges. Maybe in no interviews, people will ask the same questions, but these technics are really needed for you to build a good distributed system. For example, there is no global clock in the distributed system; then Twitter came up a Snowflake unique ID with the time concept in it. For example, the unique ID becomes the foundation of generating the short URL and newsfeed. For example, the Merkle tree helps you efficiently compare the difference between the nodes.Yes, there are some chapters that seem to be oversimplified, such as Google drive chapter, but overall the book covered a lot of patterns that require building the distributed system.A suggestion for Alex, organized the book into two sections, the common challenges and practical patterns for the distributed system, then dive into the interview questions.Great effort, I will give my 5 stars!

  3. Solid
    So, I got my hands on “System Design Interview – An insider’s guide” by Alex Xu, and I’ve got to say, it’s a pretty solid book if you’re gearing up for a tech interview, especially the tricky system design stuff.What I really liked is how Alex breaks everything down. Instead of making you wade through a sea of jargon, he walks you through each concept, bit by bit. It’s like he’s right there, guiding you, which is really cool for beginners like me. Plus, there’s a bunch of real-world examples, so it’s not just theory—you actually see how it works in practice.The best part? Alex doesn’t just teach you system design; he gets you into the mind of the interviewer. It’s not just about getting the right answers; it’s about understanding what the interviewer is looking for. Trust me, that stuff is gold!But hey, it’s not all sunshine and rainbows. If you’re already a pro at system design, you might find this book a bit on the simpler side. Don’t get me wrong, the basics are covered really well, but I wished there was more for the advanced folks.Also, I had a bit of a tough time with some of the technical lingo. Even though Alex tries to make things simple, some parts still felt like a mouthful. And, more different problem scenarios would’ve been great to see.All in all, I’d definitely recommend “System Design Interview – An insider’s guide” if you’re starting out or kinda in the middle in system design. It’s an easy-to-follow guide that’ll help you get through those intimidating interviews. For the pros, maybe look for something more advanced, but as a refresher, it works well.

  4. “System Design Interview – An Insider’s Guide” is an absolute must-read for anyone preparing for technical interviews, especially if you’re aiming for a role that involves system design. As someone who’s been through a few system design interviews, I found this book to be incredibly insightful and practical.The author does an excellent job of breaking down complex system design concepts into manageable sections. The step-by-step approach helps you understand how to approach design problems, from gathering requirements to making trade-offs and optimizing your design. Each chapter is packed with real-world examples that illustrate key principles, making it easier to grasp and apply them during an interview.What I particularly appreciated was the inclusion of sample interview scenarios and the detailed thought process behind each design. It’s not just about getting the right answer but about understanding the reasoning and methodology, which is crucial during actual interviews.Whether you’re a beginner looking to understand the basics of system design or an experienced engineer aiming to refine your skills, this book is a valuable resource. It’s well-written, easy to follow, and provides a solid foundation for tackling system design interviews with confidence. Highly recommend!”

  5. It came as surprising while I started to study the book and then found most of the diagrams are in black and white!! It’s not cheap book, it’s €40I found out when I took a look at an online version of the book

  6. It cover some system design and useful algorithm! Recommend if you havn’t heard of these concept.Check the table of content before buying it!

  7. – Explains the design of most commonly used systems in the industry with great clarity- Analysing all possible solutions to a problem, listing the pros and cons of each approach, thus helping in making more informed decisions

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