Arpit's Newsletter read by 100,000 engineers
Weekly essays on real-world system design, distributed systems, or a deep dive into some super-clever algorithm.
A no-fluff masterclass that reignites the passion in engineering and helps SDE-2, SDE-3, and above become great at designing and implementing scalable, fault-tolerant, and highly available systems.
December 2024 enrollments are closed and waitlist is open for February 2025 cohort.
If you are a beginner in System Design then check out my System Design for Beginner course.
Some testimonials from the people who recently took this course.
“No fluff engineering” - This was the only quote I saw and I knew that I must join Arpit’s cohort. And trust me, the quote is true!
I know two types of Engineers - one who are passionate about their career and curious to learn and grow, the real doers who has made engineering products so valuable. Then there is this other category - I call them “Diwana’s” of engineering. They have got this love or craze for engineering, digging so passionately into stuff and seek this dopamine hit by engineering! They take engineering to heart. I am not here to categorise you or me in either of them, but I know for sure that both can benefit a lot from this cohort.
The cohort on System Design focuses on almost all the aspects of distributed systems in a very practical way. We have discussions and code examples on scalable design, concurrency, synchronous and asynchronous processing at scale, and also the protocols and design decisions in different scenarios. Arpit first gives a high level perspective and then we dig into the details so flawlessly, ending up designing an LSM tree, without even realising it. How cool is it ? :D To keep things short, after my Masters in Distributed Systems Engineering, this was the place where I found the most clarified and organised knowledge base on large scale systems design. And, trust me I have grinded almost all the system design resources out there & can benchmark this course as great!
I would highly recommend freshers, mid-level and senior engineers to invest in yourself by joining this cohort.
Engineering is so beautiful. But, for you to see it, you must first look!
Before joining the course, I had been following Arpit on multiple platforms for more than a couple of years. I was already amazed and impressed by the quality content in depth and by Arpit's teaching style. Little did I know that I was in for a huge surprise. The first week was enough for me to realize that I have found the treasure I have been looking for a few years to learn and grow as an engineer. Looking back, I can clearly see that my engineering lenses are more clear than ever before.
Arpit, as a combination of a teacher and an engineer, is exemplary. I have never met an engineer like him before. He is great at keeping things simple and no fluff, and still manages to dive deep into each aspect of the system design. He actually did all of that for each and every design we discussed. His energy and thought process are contagious.
This cohort was the best thing happened to me in the last few years as an engineer. It feels like I have gained a few years of experience in the last 8 weeks only, and I have the roadmap ready for my learning and growth as an engineer for months. The right mix of Arpit's approach for each session, knowledge, explanations, handling of the live sessions and encouraging cohort members to share their experiences makes this course extraordinary. The cherry on the top is, the sessions end only after all questions are answered. The bonus is the recordings, which may not seem like a big deal initially, but are extremely necessary to grasp each concept and every detail Arpit has covered in the 50+ hours.
Now, when the course is completed, I will dearly miss the sessions on weekends. After going on and on for 8 weeks without taking any breaks, this feeling of missing the sessions speaks the volume of the quality and the aftereffect it left on every one of us, especially me.
I would encourage all mid/senior+ engineers to enroll for this course if you are looking to unlock your own potential for the system design and being a better version of yourself as an engineer. Based on this heavenly journey I experienced in the last 8 weeks, I feel that I have received the lifelong return, which is humongous in comparison to the investment made. Totally worth it!
I really loved the course and enjoyed being part of it. My heartfelt gratitude and respect to Arpit for designing this course exceptionally well and delivering much more than what I expected!
When I signed up for the course I came in with the expectation of learning different System Designs of various companies. Over the past 8 weeks I have come to realize on how to actually approach a problem. The way Arpit approached a System Design problem and how intuition based it can be, was truly eye opening.
Also I have come to realize how wonderful and vast the domain is. Also as Arpit mentions repeatedly in the course its not about drawing boxes, but understanding the context and actually approaching it from first principles.
Overall this course have made me fall in love with Engineering again and put me in a different trajectory that would help solve real world problems at whichever organization I work in.
PS: Arpit answered every question asked during the course and no question were left unanswered. That is truly commendable.
I've taken a few system design courses before, but they never really got into the nitty-gritty of implementation, where the real fun (and struggle) begins. System design is way more than just drawing boxes, and Arpit's course blew my mind :) Shoutout to my friend for recommending it – the cohort setup even got me to be a bit more disciplined (believe it or not)!
Arpit doesn't just talk about systems; he dives into the implementation details, the trade-offs involved, and the reasoning behind it all. It's not just about understanding existing systems; it's about levelling up your problem-solving skills for real-world design challenges.
The course format and Arpit's delivery were top-notch. I'm stoked that I caught every session live. Trust me, investing in this course was the best thing I did for my growth. You are an inspiration Arpit! Big thanks, for an awesome learning journey!
This course is the best investment I have made in my career!
I was looking for something which will actually help me upskill, gain knowledge and go deeper into things rather than talking about surface level things from interview point of view. Undoubtedly I got more than I had thought.
To be honest when I was looking for courses out there to learn System Design and to learn how things actually work in real world, I didn’t see much options and almost all of them were around Interview preparation
When I looked at the price of this course i.e. Rs 50,000 and compared it to other available options I thought it is 3-4 times of it and I asked myself will it be worth it. Today after going through this 2 months journey the answer is YES! it was completely worth it.
“The worth of good knowledge cannot be measured” Thanks a ton Arpit for the Knowledge and the learnings!
Working in the industry for just over three years, I had become complacent about the technologies around me and took their implementation for granted. What worked for me was Arpit reigniting my curiosity to delve deeper into the hows and whys of any system, library, or algorithm and think of them from a first principles perspective.
From high-level system design of "drawing boxes" to diving into SQL-level queries , connecting the tech with real-life business usecases,and then literally jumping into the IDE to code it out and see it run flawlessly. It was a cocktail of learnings.
I'm glad I signed up for this cohort. I will be using the insights and intuitions I've gained in my future endeavors. Thanks again, Arpit, for bringing this quality to the Indian tech space.
Masterclass on System Design By Arpit was extremely good. It definitely re-ignited the engineering curiosity. It was completely practical where each and every session was packed with extremely good content and lot of hands-on topics were covered. Right from Connection pooling, Load Balancer, LSM Trees, CDNs, Consistent Hashing, Distributed Task Scheduler and so on. I was honestly excited for the weekends mainly for these sessions. Not only with respect to explaining the concepts, Arpit did a great job in clarifying all the questions. Though the sessions were scheduled for 3 hours, there was not even one class which would end at that time :).
Arpit gave a lot of real-time examples for each concept which helped in coming up with more options to solve the problem. Instead of giving the solution directly, he used to probe us which helped us in thinking in the right direction. The ultimate joy came from the fact that individuals tried implementing the prototype and seeing the results.
With the depth at which Arpit covered the concepts, it became really easy to design any systems. Arpit's cohort is a hidden gem among all other youtube videos which simply considers a theoretical approach which may not work in the long run. Few takeaways from this course which I will use in my day to day work are:
I would extremely recommend every Senior Engineer/ Architects out there to take up this course.
I had two main goals when I decided to register for Arpit's videos: a) to identify gaps in my knowledge, and b) to gain insight into how staff engineers approach designing a wide array of systems. I can confidently say that both of my goals were met. If your aim is solely to pass engineering interviews, this testimonial may not be particularly helpful, and you might be better off with crash courses and prescribed books. However, after reaching a certain level, simply regurgitating the same information as every other engineer won't take you much further. Here's what I gained from Arpit's course:
Arpit summarizes complex research papers exceptionally well. Simply knowing these papers exist was extremely helpful in navigating unfamiliar territories. I was able to organize my learning in such a way that whenever I'm curious about a system, I can now search for the most relevant research paper highlighting generic patterns.
The patterns he explains are quite portable and mirror how real systems are actually designed. Having some relevant experience under my belt before watching his videos made them even more applicable to my work. If you're a few years into your career, you'll likely find his videos particularly helpful for practical application.
The course covers variety of topics; if you are looking to just watch for interviews (I recommend not :-)), even then there's enough breadth in both product architecture and infrastructure.
He encourages you to think critically about your exact database queries. It's easy to gloss over queries, but actually writing them down forces us to think harder and more precisely.
Even though I purchased the videos, listening to others' questions were helpful, as more often than not, the doubts we have are shared by others and get addressed.
Before I joined the cohort, my mood was low to put it mildly. But just the first week was enough to lift my spirits. Looking back, I couldn’t have picked a better time to join. This course helped me shake off the fear of coding the unknown. Now, I look forward to these extremely engaging and intense sessions every week.
Arpit has an amazing knack for breaking down big, complex systems into concrete, repeatable patterns. His years of dedication and extreme passion towards designing scalable distributed systems really show. For me, the best part and USP of the course is Arpit’s unique ability to break down and demonstrate how the core fundamental patterns that drive the most complex systems can be built in just a few hours to a couple of days, all with minimal setup or infrastructure. This practical, hands-on approach made the concepts highly relatable and achievable, significantly boosting my confidence and enthusiasm.
The cohort felt super relatable and had a very high engagement because the focus was on designing practical, real-world systems with a strong bias towards user and business empathy. Most of us connected with the real-world constraints and had our own backstories to share. Arpit managed to bring together highly motivated people with top-notch expertise, sparking intense and high-quality discussions.
As we near the end of the cohort, I feel highly motivated to further my expertise in the area of distributed and scalable systems. For me, this course rates right at the top. It’s at least a 100X return on your investment of money and time.
What a delight it from Arpit who shared his practical experience and discussed in detail pros and cons of each approach via building intuition. Such a relevant stuff it was and there was definitely no fluff in it.
I feel more confident than ever in taking part in discussions related to system design, I think of all cases, cost, engineering complexity, user experience while implementing solution.
Best part is years of experience is condensed and shared by Arpit, how he handled things, most common things we should consider and what not.
If someone wants to take deep dive into designing systems from intermediate to professional, this is the best investment you got to make. Arpit helps by building intuition on how to solve common to complex product problem using engineering. It is not about just using fancy terms like distributed, cloud and whatnot but rather understanding on hardware level how it will impact not just engineering but business revenue.
Again, amazing course love the sessions, content, how it was represented, practical experience in implementing stuff and long AMA at the end brought so many interesting insights from everyone.
I would highly recommend taking this course, it is not only fun and engaging but it changes your way of thinking and approaching a new system by looking at the tradeoffs, crunching the numbers and putting yourself in your users' shoes.
In my timezone the course would start at 6:30 am and each morning i would wake-up with peak excitement because i would know i will be part in a bunch of interesting design discussions and debates.
Arpit's passion and excitement is contagious, after the sessions with him i would rediscover the joy of coding for fun again, he makes every complicated topic seem so easy that you think to yourself: "hmm would never have thought i would have the competence and confidence to implement an LFU strategy on O(1) time or a load balancer, yet after the session with Arpit i feel motivated to give it a try"
Arpit, you are an exceptional teacher. The way you have fostered our intuition over these 8 weeks is truly commendable. I've learned to recognize patterns, and as you often say, it's just copy-paste from there!
Being part of this cohort has been such a fun experience, and I found myself eagerly looking forward to the weekends because of it. The effort you have put into building this course is evident in the quality of the content we've discussed.
Not only have you helped me develop intuition, but you've also ignited a curiosity in me to explore further. Now, I read and research more before making any design decisions, and I find myself understanding technical papers more easily.
I can't thank you enough for your hard work and for always resolving our queries by the end of the day. Thank you so much for everything you do—your dedication is truly inspiring.
This year I completed the beginner course and rewatched the advanced lectures. I had stumbled upon your course by chance. The "No fluff" tag caught my attention, at a time when I was hungry for asli engineering discussions. I signed up and the course exceeded my expectations.
Thank you so much for putting such high quality content out there, for making it accurate and simple to grasp! Thank you for being encouraging, and for making the course discussion-based which made us think and not just consume! I have learnt a lot from your courses and videos - so much so that I have been getting appreciative comments on my knowledge, in system design discussions with peers. The content and your palpable passion in sharing it with the world reinstilled in me the inspiration, which had made me pursue computer science as a career in the first place - it reminded me of the joy in learning, understanding, and building systems with real world impact.
Thank you for all your efforts in teaching and inspiring! Hoping to keep in touch and continue learning from you. 🙂
I have done a couple of system design courses on Udemy and watched a bunch on YouTube as well, but none of them are even close to this.
What differentiates this course from the rest,
One can understand how much passion and depth Arpit goes in his YouTube videos as well
Previously, I had a fixed mindset regarding how I was going to tackle any system design question. Start with the functional and non-functional requirements, do some back-of-the-hand calculations to depict the scale of the system, start drawing boxes for application servers, load balancers, queues, and databases. While this approach works most of the time for cracking a few interview rounds, Arpit’s course forces you to ditch this conventional thought process and makes you dive deeper into systems and their actual implementations.
This course definitely is a goldmine not only in terms of the content but most importantly, how it sparks curiosity within you to think of system designs beyond just interviews.
A course is only as good as the instructor and Surprise!! Surprise!! Arpit is too good at the teaching part as well. You can sense the enthusiasm and curiosity in his way of teaching as well. He would patiently answer all the questions asked even though the class duration was well past 4 hours. He is open to new ideas and solutions and doesn’t make you feel any lesser even for a bit.
Any senior engineer looking to make an impact at their workplace or waiting for that engineering spark to be reignited again, this course is a must! Thank you for proving that true engineering is well beyond interviews. "SUPERB!"
This was the first one of the kind Cohort that I enrolled in. The way Arpit teaches is fabulous. I would say it is not even a teaching but feels more like an actual discussion that would go into an engineer's day-to-day life. He carries total empathy for a learner. The depth and details he carries in everything he says are fantastic. All the doubts and discussions will have an answer from Arpit. Folks tuning in to every cohort have the brightest minds, and the way discussion happens in cohort with Arpit along with such minds, is just a treat to experience.
What I loved the most was brainstorming sessions. It's never a monologue from Arpit. Sometimes we start to build and would never ever feel that we might be building something so big in just one half of the cohort's session, that too with proper brainstorming from people. The way he helps people to start dissecting the problem; feels like he is just showing the light, others are building the system unknowingly, and feels amazing after we see the output. The way he sparks the decision-making processes helps to build the right intuition, goes deep into the details, and picks every bit and piece of the system is just fantastic. It makes the session the most engaging.
You will get the hands-on experience of picking the simplicity of the system, importance of knowing the basics and other concepts in engineering, and dealing with the tradeoffs of every technology, and mostly the intuition-building
If I have to point out the learnings, they are something like this; and I believe most of the other people in the cohort would agree with me on this;
This is not an ordinary system design cohort, you will ACTUALLY build systems that scale; for millions of users. And no joy is more than seeing it work.
Arpit is undoubtedly one of the best engineers I've seen in my life. Started following his content on youtube quite a few months back and really liked the way he dives deep on interesting core topics. That brought me to his System Design Masterclass course. The initial Indian mindset made me contemplate on the price of the course but boy oh boy! I'm not regretting even a single bit for what the course was priced at! :)
This is a goldmine of content and as I say, if not all, most who have taken the course would agree that Arpit has truly sparked the engineering curiosity. He offers incredible value in what he teaches. Not exaggerating but I've had "wow" moments in every single class.
Arpit's credentials in engineering is as good as it comes. He is a seasoned pro and it shows in every session, the love and passion for engineering and his craft. With just 3 years of experience, when I entered the course, I was blown away in the first week itself. A serious eye opener for me into building systems for scale.
Arpit has curated the syllabus very beautifully and paces it really well. I'd really suggest to take the interactive live cohort rather than buying the compiled course cause live sessions are just something else! Its truly interactive. Almost every system is built by brainstorming with the folks in the cohort and Arpit helps converge to the right intuition and idea going step by step from scratch, questioning every decision made from the problem statement, design and implementation perspectives in depth. In short by the end of each system design you have the entire design laid out to you in which you understand the purpose of every component used, what it solves for and why this and not anything else, cause you were part of a lengthy discussion that arrived to it. Truly awesome stuff!
Its not only theory or surface level, he emphasizes so much on building prototypes for the concepts and systems we build in the cohort and he does a code walkthrough and explains his prototypes to show that its not hard to build prototypes. This also solidifies your understanding in the concept better as you often uncover interesting challenges when implementing. You also get access to a community and many great folks in the cohort. I felt like the dumbest person in the cohort and absolutely loved that cause there was so much to learn every time.
His patience and love for the work he does is so admirable and inspiring. Once the session is done he is open to taking and answering questions for however long it takes. Does not shy away or asks to stop asking questions after each session. I've seen this QnA sessions go for so long and he doesn't even flinch or calls quits. Massive respect for this Arpit!
Overall one of the best investments I've made in myself for my career.
I thank Arpit for this brilliant cohort and would 100% recommend it to anyone who has some experience in the field and looking to scale up to be senior engineer wanting to build systems the right way.
Don't miss out folks!
"The Best Real World System Design" course in market right now.
Arpit touches upon some really interesting areas in system design. He doesn't just draw the boxes, he really focuses on the implementation details of the system. For example,
He explained and "actually discussed" so many different designs in a period of 2 months. Hats off man.
He actually focuses a lot on building your intuition. I would Highly recommend this course to anyone who is looking for building the intuition and not just the theory.
Arpit is a great guide, his passion for learning and making others learn as well is remarkable. I had been following his YouTube videos for long and the way he approached and explained problems motivated me to take this course.
For sure, it's been one of the best decisions. Few principles that he emphasizes on have been key take aways for me [other than building the intuition around taking technical design decisions of course].
1.Simple systems scale best -never over complicate 2. Database is the most brittle component of your system, design it cautiously 3. While designing you always gain some you lose some, you need to decide the best tradeoff for your system. 4. There are always multiple ways of doing things, whenever you think of reactive approach think of proactive as well and vice versa, some scenarios might be best fit in completely contrasting scenarios of your previous design decision. 5. Be self-critic of your design and question every design decision taken to converge to best design.
Somehow, we might be knowing these but how beautifully applying them affected our decisions at every step just ingrained it further.
Before taking this course i went through some comments and feedback for this course out of which 90% were positive however there was one of the comments which stated him as "self-proclaimed industry expert" -to this one i would say he definitely is an expert in what he is teaching and that can be acclaimed by anyone taking this course.
So, I would highly recommend this cohort for anyone who wants to understand how real-world systems work and actively participate in the discussions. Other than live cohort the recorded learning course will be equally helpful for people who want to absorb the concepts at their own pace.
I would highly recommend the course to anyone who wants to build the skills to approach designing systems from first principles. Lastly, I would like to say that Arpit absolutely loves engineering and puts in great effort to make the course an awesome experience for everyone involved.
I am absolutely thrilled to share my experience with Arpit System Design Cohort. Participating in this program has been a transformative journey that has enriched my understanding of system design concepts and elevated my skills as a software engineer.
From the very beginning, Arpit's passion for system design and his expertise in the field were evident. His well-structured curriculum and engaging teaching style made complex topics seem approachable and understandable. Arpit's ability to break down intricate design principles into digestible chunks ensured that I never felt overwhelmed.
One of the standout features of this cohort was the emphasis on hands-on learning. Through numerous real-world case studies and practical exercises, I had the opportunity to apply the theoretical knowledge to actual system design scenarios. This experiential learning aspect truly solidified my understanding of the concepts and boosted my confidence in tackling real-world design challenges.
I cannot recommend this Cohort enough for anyone looking to enhance their system design skills. Whether you are a seasoned software engineer or just starting your journey, this program will undoubtedly take your design abilities to new heights. Thank you, Arpit, for your dedication and expertise in guiding us through this enriching experience!
All aspiring programmers who crave to build scalable, lasting distributed systems should attend this program. Arpit always nudges us to be hands-on writing code during the course. He helped in inculcating the process of breaking the problem to minutest bit which make us focus on the crux ignoring the surrounding fluff and go and solve for it. The breadth of coverage is quite comprehensive from CDNs, to storage systems, to caching, to databases, to networking the entire gamut of technology spectrum is given a time slice in the course.
Personally for me this course changed the outlook & perspective of how I view systems and problems. I used to be overwhelmed while dealing with complex microservices. Now I feel this course hast helped me to build a muscle of intuition on how systems are built. This hunch/intuition is driving me now to simplifying solutions, instead of adding boxes to the system, I am striving to build systems which are simple and intuitive.
Kudos Arpit, you are a rockstar & inspirational.
The best course for system design to elevate your engineering career.
I have previously tried many resources for getting better at designing systems at scale. But all of them were more focussed on interview, ending up as drawing some black boxes without understanding them.
This course helps building the intuition on what are the possibilities at every stage in designing the system and how to make a tradeoff between them. Definitely, I recommend people to take up the course.
Thank you Arpit, you are simply amazing. Will definitely be among the best teachers in my life that shaped my learning.
Before attending this course, my interest towards learnings B Trees or Graphs is less interesting and boring. Once Arpit has explained about DB internals in one of our cohort design discussion's and how these data structures are being used and why in a certain way, my curiosity has increased a lot.
Now I am interested towards learnings every internals of systems like e.g Docker, Kubernetes, Kafka, Bit-cask, Redis and how the data is being stored & what trade offs have been taken and especially what are they compromising on in order to achieve consistency, reliability or durability.
This cohort from Arpit is worth every penny spent and is just a beginning for me/everyone in order to become better engineer. I would recommend every engineer to take part of this course and be a 10x Engineer. Thank you Arpit a lot, kudos to you for the hard work on creating of the course content and patiently clearing every engineer doubts.
Arpit's system design course stands out as one of the best available options. He places a strong emphasis on constructing systems while taking into account intricate low-level implementation details. Throughout the span of 8 weeks, we engaged in discussions about numerous systems and participated in a multitude of brainstorming and question-answer sessions within a closely-knit cohort. I will always cherish the following key takeaways from the course:
The last time I maintained such unwavering focus during four-hour-long sessions was back in my days of preparing for the JEE. I wholeheartedly recommend this course to anyone seeking to gain expertise in designing real-world systems.
I recently completed the System Design Masterclass, and it surpassed all my expectations. Arpit's approach transcends traditional box-drawing exercises, delving deep into the intricate implementation details that distinguish this course.
A standout feature is Arpit's emphasis on practicality. Rather than presenting abstract concepts, he guides you through choosing the right queries for system development and optimising them step-by-step based on specific requirements. The course fearlessly addresses tradeoffs, offering valuable insights for informed decision-making.
In just two months, Arpit covered an impressive array of diverse designs, fostering a profound understanding of system design principles. His dedication to facilitating genuine discussions, not just surface-level explanations, is truly commendable.
I had the pleasure of enrolling in Arpit Bhayani's System Design Masterclass course, and it was truly an awe-inspiring experience! Arpit's teaching style is beyond compare; he effortlessly breaks down complex topics into small, easily understandable units, making the learning process enjoyable and effective. The systems discussed in the course were pragmatic and immediately applicable to real-world projects. I found myself confidently applying the knowledge gained in my work projects.
Every penny invested in this course was worth it and more. What sets Arpit apart is his exceptional dedication to his students. He goes above and beyond by spending a significant amount of additional time post-session to answer every single question with great detail and patience. On several occasions, the Q&A sessions extended for an impressive 2.5 hours beyond the regular 2-hour session, ensuring that all questions were answered.
I cannot recommend this course highly enough to anyone looking to enhance their system design skills. It's an invaluable resource led by an outstanding instructor, and I'm grateful for the knowledge and support I received throughout the course.
A big thank you, Arpit, for this fantastic learning journey!
Two words - Absolutely fantastic! This systems design course has been nothing short of a revelation. It delves deep into intricate system design engineering concepts, offering a comprehensive understanding that encourages critical thinking while discouraging broad generalizations. The course does so, while discussing the business implications for each decision that is taken, which you don't get to learn anywhere else.
I was an avid viewer of Arpit's YouTube channel from long before I took this course and his website has a ton of resources if someone actually takes the time to go through those topics. The beauty of the course is that once the system is designed, Arpit makes sure to specify how can a similar system be implemented locally (where ever feasible). I have no doubt that I'll continue to refer back to the meticulously prepared class notes and insightful recordings in the future. I have nothing but admiration for this course and I am definitely excited to take his Redis internals course sometime in the future!
Enrolling in this course has been a game-changer, and I can't recommend it enough. Thank you, Arpit!
Arpit has truly poured his soul into this course.
Beyond the technical knowledge, I admire him for his passion for technology. Not only does he possess excellent technical acumen, but he also excels in articulating and demystifying complex technical concepts.
Decoding intricate systems and making them easy to comprehend is his forte. I also appreciated the structure and delivery of the content; the three-hour-long sessions never felt monotonous or repetitive.
I would highly recommend this course to anyone eager to learn how complex systems work.
I have personally learned a lot of concepts and gained a great deal of confidence in approaching challenging technical decisions. The terms and concepts that were once unfamiliar to me before the course are now very clear.
My intuition and curiosity have been ignited, and a solid foundation has been laid to understand and build complex systems without unnecessary complications.
The best tech investment that I have ever done by enrolling in this course. Excellent learning through the live interactive classes and cohort mates. 1000% recommended for all software engineers!
I was super impressed with the concurrency part of the lectures having pessimistic locking with select queries extending it to various booking systems -> task scheduler -> MessageBroker, scaling web sockets for millions, design of loader balancer and S3 storage.
I am much more confident now with the strong intuition and right way to design any system. I am able to recognise the patterns in the system design :)
Course has been nothing short of transformative for my understanding of complex systems design architecture. Arpit provided his valuable real-life experience that he encountered over his last decade of experience, that truly enriched my learning experience a lot.
Through practical experience of Arpit and peers I gained an understanding of designing scalable, reliable, available and most importantly business aligned architectures.
I highly recommend this course to anyone looking to enhance their skillset in designing reliable, efficient and business aligned architecture/products.
Whether you're an experience or beginner, the engaging learning environment will undoubtedly propel your career to new heights.
System Design is(or was) my weakness. I could find many tutorials online but couldn't find structured way to design systems. Arpit taught us this "How to think" part very well. I could memorize 100s of System Design but still felt underconfident, but not anymore! :)
Also, Live discussions are golden. They force me to think before I can engage with Arpit in brainstorming. Pre-reads and post-reads are very effective as well. Needless to say Arpit is a very practical person, has real experience in industry, very professional in discussions.
Your videos on Youtube sparkled my interest in backend engineering, and I've learnt a lot through them and they've made me a better engineer. I feel you don't get enough credit for your fabulous channel, . I always felt it difficult to understand content in this domain, but when you used to explain, everything felt so easy and intuitive. That is the reason I signed up for this course when couple of people recommended me to do so.
In the first couple of sessions itself, I was amazed by the amount of stuff I learnt, and it siply continued in all the sessions. The course recordings are like a lifelong treasure which I will keep going back to for lifetime. The amount of value you deliver by this course is beyond words.
Two of the most important things in engineering is to 1) ask the right questions and 2) How to approach a problem and think about it. You showed us how to do these two very well.
The interactive session format is very helpful. This way we think about the solution actively, and I loved how the inputs of different people in the discussion ultimately leads to the solution. And Some very brilliant engineers in the cohort out there. Your dedication to run this course and channel is superb, it shows your deep passion about this field.
The pre-reads section as well as suggestions to read/explore/implement after the sessions helps us get even better as an engineer.
All in all, 'Learning full, money and time vasool'. Thanks a lot for this.
This course is different where depth and breadth regard. I am a seasoned Engineer who has been working for many years. I have never found such a course before. It does the following.
In short you will get pointers to different knowledge areas which, may be you never knew. You can think of it as another Engineering course with the focus on the application in real world use cases of system design.
I wish Arpit all the best.
These couple of months was truly an exceptional learning journey. What stood out for me was the immersive approach to implementation. Arpit took us through the intricate details of each system, allowing us to tackle lower-level challenges and gain a much deeper understanding. This really gave me the confidence to tackle real world problems.
Another highlight were the brainstorming sessions where we freely discussed our ideas and approaches. This not only enriched the learning experience but also exposed us to many different approaches to solve the problem at hand. A great part of the learning was through the questions and discussions that others brought forward.
Each session was filled with valuable insights and practical knowledge. The course struck the perfect balance between theoretical concepts and practical considerations, equipping us with the know-how of designing robust systems. We delved into aspects like extensibility of our systems and cost optimization as well, which was really insightful.
Overall, it was a great learning experience, and I had the best time! This course is gold and truly does live up to the #AsliEngineering message. Highly recommended
I can't imagine a better system design resource.
Arpit starts with the simplest possible solution and strongly emphasises introducing complexities only when necessary.
He encourages you to think of the technical, product and business motivations behind a system. He doesn't really prescribe solutions to problems but helps you build intuitions behind usage of technologies. 11/10, would highly recommend.
Things that worked out the best for me were:
Thinking is golden but thinking how to think is platinum!
What I particularly like about the course is his focus on building core intuitions rather than making the students learn a specific topic or a concept. There is dearth of content online that focuses on learning as an end rather than a means to an end (primarily job interviews). In this landscape, Arpit's course is a breath of fresh air. I would highly recommend this course to any software engineer who is seriously interested in leveling up their thought process when it comes to designing long term sustainable distributed systems.
Two things that stood out for me were - deep-dives and out-of-the-box approaches. Always striving to go one layer (and sometimes uncomfortably so) deeper to understand the underlying worked out very well for me as an exercise. I have not been used to doing this for the major part of my career, and specifically more so after leaving college.
Going out of the box, in some cases where the trick is not in the engineering itself but how the real world operates was specifically very interesting to me. The example of how a certain engineer went ahead and negotiated the contract rather than solely focusing on optimizations, relaxing product constraints to make systems cheaper/simpler were 2 such examples that I can recall off the top of my head.
Your insights have truly transformed my approach to design/problem-solving. Implementing strategies applying the Opposites framework, wearing hats of Products, Managers and Engineers etc have deeply influenced my decision-making process.
I'm incredibly grateful for the wealth of knowledge and experience you've shared, and I can confidently say that it has left a lasting mark on my mindset. Thank you for your invaluable guidance and inspiration.
Great course for senior developers.
I am from a non-computer science background and working as software developer for the last 7+ years. Whatever i have learnt till now is through experience.
I was not very good at converting the business problems into software requirements. I sticked to the the first thing that came to my mind when i hear the problem statement and worked my way around that. Arpit's teaching changed that. The way i approach problems is systematic and the frameworks that he sprinkles through out the course is very useful and practical. Highly recommended.
I have worked as a professional software engineer for over 8 years. However, after working in the company setting, I lost my curiosity in the field. I just got used to delivering things for the company and I found no time to explore and dive deeper into things or be creative.
It got to the point that I thought about quitting the field altogether.
I started watching the YouTube videos posted by you which sparked my curiosity again. Since I liked your teaching style, I decided to take your course. It turned out to be a great decision since not only I learned a lot, but it also reignited my curiosity in the field. It also made me realize how beautiful this field is if approached through first principles.
You are a great teacher Arpit and I thank you again for reigniting my curiosity. I will miss the classes.
If you're looking for a transformational 8-week experience that will boost your ability to understand and build real-world systems, then this is the best course for you! Over the course of this cohort, I feel I've grown significantly as an engineer in many domains - knowledge and understanding of engineering systems, ability to understand and approach system design problems, brainstorming and decision-making.
The amount of technical depth covered (both theoretical and practical) in this course is unparalleled and would set up a great foundation for any engineer to understand and build almost any real-life system. We didn't just discuss theoretical aspects of systems (which are pretty important btw) but also touched upon how real-world production systems use these concepts
Arpit has an amazing approach to make you tackle engineering problems - by taking you along on a thought journey from the fundamentals to practical real-world applications.
I joined the course looking to sharpen my engineering brainstorming and decision-making and the course did help me achieve that. There are a lot of opportunities to tackle fresh, open-ended design questions while being scrutinised by Arpit - these helped grow my with brainstorming and decision-making skills significantly.
If you're considering this course to grow as an engineer, I would highly recommend this course. It might just turn out to be the best 8-weeks you've spent learning engineering.
Arpit, I wanted to take a moment to express my heartfelt gratitude for the incredible impact you've had on my learning journey during the course. Your dedication, expertise, and passion for teaching shone through every session, making the learning experience both enlightening and enjoyable.
Your ability to break down complex concepts into understandable chunks, coupled with your patience and encouragement, truly empowered me to grasp challenging material with confidence. Your enthusiasm for the subject matter was infectious, and it motivated me to push my boundaries and strive for excellence.Thank you for being such an inspiring mentor and for making a lasting impact on my educational journey.
This course is truly in a league of its own. Here are the things that differentiate it:
I would recommend this course to anyone who wants to gain confidence in approaching system design in the real world.
It helped me gain my Engineering curiosity back again which was long lost in the world of corporate deliverables :D . It was fun learning from you again after 7 long years. You are an inspiration to many of us and I hope you know that.
Even though I've been in the industry for 7 years now, I feel like I've grown significantly as an Engineer over the course of this cohort. The key highlights of the course which stands out from any other course in the market.
This course is not just for cracking interviews. It will help you grow as "Asli Engineer"
As a mid level engineer, inching towards senior level, I always wondered about the process that sets one apart from the rest, in terms of technical expertise. To be brutally honest, we all know that in IT where majority of the work we perform on a daily basis, can be performed by any mid level engineer. Then, how do you create that difference in knowledge as you add more years to your experience?
This COHORT has showed me the path forward to create that difference. We deep dived about 30 systems in 8 weeks and it’s not these 30, but the comprehensive approach, minute implementation details and its application to seemingly very different systems, that created all the difference. And these sessions are not monologues, rather proper brainstorming session where we literally covered low level design decisions (storage/schema, communication protocols, concurrency controls, type of locking, etc) to micro optimisations (batching, connection pooling, indexing, etc) to high level architectures. Also, the focus is always towards designing for real systems which are cost efficient (one of the most important requirement for any company) and not some jazz which look complex.
Prototyping these systems (which Arpit will encourage you for, every hour of this cohort), will actually make you realise that it’s not that hard as we think. Personally, it also helped me understand the resources one needs to consume at different levels of experience/knowledge and THIS sets me on a path where I can keep growing my technical horizon. I literally had a time of my life attending this cohort. And I highly recommend this to anybody who is inclined towards understanding and designing complex distributed systems.
ProTip: Participate in brainstorming sessions. Prototype systems you are building. Utilise 1:1 sessions.
This is one of the best courses out there on system design. Arpit covers a wide range of system design topics and concepts in a very interactive manner. All these concepts are in turn also explained through design discussions on real time use cases.
It is not a usual course where someone is speaking and you are just listening, I loved the format of the course where you get to dive deep into all the concepts through interactive discussions. This course is highly recommended to working professionals who want an extra edge in growing their career as engineers/architects, it would definitely improve your approach on designing and implementing software solutions. Like Arpit said in his very first session - "approach is more important than the solution". So if you want to become "Asli Engineer" this course is a must :).
I attended April cohort of Arpit's System design course. The best part about this course is the discussions. For every system, Arpit would discuss it with the people in cohort. He'd probe you. We don't just mug up one approach that Arpit tells. We discuss n approaches and see pros and cons of each. We understand tradeoffs. Since we are involved in the discussion, the learning is internalized.
Another best part about the course is the first-principles thinking. Arpit would start from what we want to achieve, will go step-by-step, discard few options, keep few, discuss about some innovative ideas that Computer Science giants have used to solve a specific problem in designing systems. So, in a long, long time, I again got intellectually stimulated and loved how small innovations and first-principles thinking create huge impact.
Above is the reason I felt that he justifies what he says. He'll teach you 'Asli Engineering' and not just a crash course to clear interviews.
I have been tired of the entire tech ecosystem online (especially in India) where so much focus is on interview prep and so little on improving one's engineering skills. It is as if once you get a job, you will somehow automatically become better engineers and there is no effort and training required for that. Aprit's course was a breath of fresh air. It sold the promise of becoming a better engineer instead of the boring goal of getting a job at a big fancy tech company. And boy, did it live up to its promise!
The course covers a large and diverse range of systems. Each system solves some real world problem that as software engineers, we will encounter in some form sooner or later. This implies that by the end of the course, you will be confident to tackle any engineering problem and design any arbitrary system. However, what makes the course truly special is its structure where its not like we have a preacher preaching us from the pulpit and we are passive recipients of knowledge. Rather, we are active participants in the discussion. As a part of the cohort, you will be actively thinking as Arpit throws a problem at you. You will be trying to come up with a design. You will evaluate the suggestions of your peers, forcing you to think critically. In this process of thinking and trying and failing, you will deepen your understanding. You will know exactly what will work and what will not and why. Compare this to watching system design videos on YouTube where you are just consuming information without thinking critically and applying yourself.
Since the course is well designed and structured, the amount of learning per unit of time spent in this course is extremely high. Arpit is the senior engineer that all of us want in our teams but few of us are lucky to have. His passion and love for engineering will rub off on you and your desire to become a better engineer will get stronger. You will pick up mental models that he uses to design systems.
As a co-incidence, in this course I also found an old friend with whom I had no contact for around eight years. Essentially, good things will start happening to you once you take this course :)
Arpit is very detail oriented and has designed and structured the course extremely well. Arpit keeps the course very interactive and keeps you on the edge of the seat trying to think about solutions to the system design problems.
Not only that, Arpit also discusses implementations of minute details and that makes the course extremely interesting. These are de-facto "homework assignments" that really makes you think and feel confident of the learnings done.
In the end, a lot of material and resources are shared that anyone can take away from course. More importantly, you will know how to evaluate and think on how to design better software systems.
When I joined this course, I only had 1.5 years of industry experience and I was initially uncertain whether I would be able to comprehend the concepts. However, now I believe that choosing to take the course was the right decision. If you take the pre-reads for the class seriously and go through them beforehand, you will be able to gain a deep understanding of the concepts. The instructor, Arpit, takes questions after explaining the topics, and we always had stimulating brainstorming sessions, which made the topics more engaging.
If you enjoy discussing real-world problems and are eager to learn about the concepts behind the most commonly used applications, I would strongly recommend enrolling in this course.
Arpit's course is amazing! He is very frank and open with members in the cohort. He guides the discussions well and cross questions design decisions to probe engineers to think deeply and evaluate their thought process.
He encourages PoC's and research to deepen the understanding of concepts and technology. The open discussions are very knowledgable and enriching.
I would highly encourage senior engineer to take this course to genuinely become better engineers.
Undoubtedly, my best investment till date. The way Arpit has designed this course is truly amazing. It’s not about designing some ad hoc systems but it’s about drafting a thought process that goes behind taking a critical design decisions backed with valid data points.
It’s amazing how he breaks down complex problem statements & eventually leads to scaling of the systems withholding simplicity with a correct rationale behind it. Every session in the cohort gets you to some newer concepts & eventually helping you become a good software engineer.
I would recommend the dedicated course is worth the investment. To deepen my understanding of HLD I opted for the course. I still remember my first call with Arpit, I have never met such a curious engineer in my complete career and was damn impressed when I saw his GitHub.
Arpit helped me in thinking of a bigger picture on an engineering scale. Core concepts with amazing discussion in a very lucid way. It literally has everything that I wanted to learn. The best thing about the course is that he digs deeper into those topics which we hardly find anywhere and the push he gives to each one of us in session motivates us to think beyond. I do miss Saturday and Sunday discussions with you :(
Thank you Arpit for the Amazing sessions. I have become a great fan of you due to your simplicity, depth of design knowledge, and teaching skills.
The course is very smartly crafted - mix of tech inputs, concepts, mental frameworks at workplace like business > product > engineering, brainstorming, secret sauces for senior engineers and much much more. Arpit is very professional, has ton of knowledge and industry experience, has a knack for teaching/mentoring/coaching and pours a lot of energy in the course.
Keep up the good work, Arpit!
I took this course during my leave and this was the best use of my time. Arpit is patient and goes over each topic in detail. He also makes sure that no questions are left unanswered.
The breakdown of the class pre-reads, then brainstorming session and finally closing with implementation are very seamless and help make the understanding easier.
Arpit is also generous enough to share his resources and learnings from his career journey. After 8 weeks of class, it was tough to find resources/classes to keep me engaged and I thoroughly missed our discussions after the class ended.
Arpit you were able to rekindle my curiosity and remind the thrill that comes with understanding topics in detail. Thank you!
According to me, attending Arpit's system design class was an act of self-care.I feel immensely proud to have granted myself this experience. I'm thrilled by the personal growth it has sparked, not just in refining my system design instincts but also in sparking motivation and inspiration. It enabled me to explore various methodologies, approach problems with more clarity, prototyping systems and deepen my enthusiasm for engineering.
The logical progression in our discussions and the decisions to use a solution were heavily property (sytem) based instead of associating with a trending technology. I valued our exploration of basic solutions, followed by our ability to refine them into more advanced alternatives we were already familiar with.
Additionally, the course's alignment with real-world systems and scenarios significantly elevated my learning experience.
One of the most important that I love about this are the discussions that happen during the course. Arpit gives chances to everyone to speak up, explain, and he probes deeper until the foundation level knowledge is hit. This course also covers a lot of different systems and I learnt a lot of things on how different companies does stuff and broadened the knowledge overall.
Arpit preaches on product, cost, simplicity and then only engineering comes is something not everyone does, but is essential to every engineer and organization to flourish. I hope I can have a lot more of interesting conversations with Arpit !!
I had 7+ years of experience but never got the opportunity to build/work on systems myself. I joined Arpit's class to learn Systems Design in general. It turned out to be whole new different experience.
It's not just your regular system design definitions and interview cracking crash course. He focuses on cognitive thinking and the basics of building a system on your own.
He focuses on trying things out and talks about design in those terms only. It is how you would actually build a system from scratch which clears your fundamentals and let's you question each decision to build an efficient system.
#Asli Engineering!! Definitely lived up to the hashtag!! When I came across this course, I really liked the syllabus and the way it focused on real life systems. Most of the material related to system design I found online was quite theoretical and left me wondering whether I would ever need it. However this course was different. It wasn't a one way traffic. To me, it was almost like a fast-forward version of how that particular system must have been designed when it came into existence and what must have been the thought process of the engineers who built it. It was more of a discussion with Arpit doing the handholding if someone misses something and sharing terrific insights about real life systems. Not just the design discussions, but regular question-answering sessions also provided different perspectives about why that particular system should be designed in that fashion and also how things actually work in different companies. There were so many new platforms and systems that I hadn't even heard of before I took this course.
Arpit has structured this course in a very optimal way, so that you always have something to take away from a session. Every week's sessions left me wondering. How does this guy manage all this ?? and that too with such passion and energy!!
I highly recommend taking this course, especially for those who are at the start of their careers like me as you would also get to learn a lot from the senior folks as well who take this course. Also the learning curve would be extremely high.
PS: This course was the most productive thing I did in the last 7-8 weeks. My main take away from the course was most the systems that are extremely successful are quite simple and intuitive. It's just that we as engineers should know how to approach a problem and ask the right questions. Arpit's course focuses on that a lot!!
Being in the industry for six years, I had mostly worked in the data domain and had only surface knowledge of the system design components - especially from the application side. Though I am a reader and have read many blogs on system design, application designing and internals but never grasped the concepts so clearly until I joined this masterclass!
I was so grateful to be part of Arpit's cohort and learned from him in many ways than one, his attention to details while designing systems, focusing on real systems and examples, scalability and also making sure all questions are answered before closing for the day.
Summarizing, I would say, it is a MUST DO COURSE FOR EVERY ENGINEER!!
Thanks Arpit for sharing your knowledge and inspiring so many people :)
Cohort sessions by Arpit are great. I especially like his ability of explaining things. He has the ability to make systems as simple as possible. I would be happy to attend such cohort sessions more(good way to spend weekends). I have already started implementing his learnings in my work. When you start understanding the systems to such granular level, you start enjoying the system design
Joining this cohort was the best thing I did. And believe me this is going to be very good investment for your learnings, you will not at all regret after enrolling this course. The sessions are designed in such a way that it inculcates a habit of thinking Why and How about everything in technology, which eventually widespread the thinking process and motivates to learn and explore more. Thanks a lot Arpit for sharing your learnings in such a nice way!!!
I got to know about Arpit and his course in late 2021 though one of my friend who already took his course but I signed up for May 2022 cohort, now after completing this course I wish I could have signed up early but its "Better late than never".
To support my above statement, my opinion about this course:
It boosts your curiosity, which is very much needed if you are working in IT. For me it has not just added to my curiosity but multiplied.
You become very much aware and see things very differently which you have already read from your school, college time and using it daily. (*Mindset shift)
The course structure is very well designed from Fundamentals to designing highly scalable systems.
The brainstorming session throughout the course which is very much needed.
I would highly recommend this course to all the engineers out there if you really wanna ignite the #AsliEngineer in you. (Discord community, Cracking interviews, ..., etc all are the bonus). Worth investing.
Thanks a ton Arpit for putting your great efforts to this course. :)
The lectures by Arpit, are explained thoroughly and reinforced through practical usecases. It's best suited for developers that already know SQL and have some industry experience - Junior/Mid-level Backend engineers looking to move to Senior levels or experienced engineers looking to refresh knowledge. The lectures helped me to understand the DB internals. In-depth discussion of LSM-trees and how one can use the adhoc components built on LSM-trees & other databases is just mind blowing. Lectures are a guide on "How to optimize the application as well as DB performance in conjunction". Emphasis on core concepts by Arpit will make entire system design like a game of 'LEGO Building block'.
This course will make you love engineering again if you're put-off by boring 9 to 5 job. I would describe the whole vibe of the course as a discussion with experienced engineer rather than a traditional structured academic course. The course is worth every penny you will ever invested.
"Your enthusiasm is contagious" - a fellow student said to Arpit on our last day of the cohort, and I couldn't agree more.
It goes beyond what's just needed for interviews and tries to address difficult design choice questions
The classes are well organised: They aren't just a unidirectional flow of information. The students get to participate in brainstorming the problem statement, building them from scratch, and Arpit ensures to nudge us just enough to keep us on track, and more often than not, the students themselves only are able to come up with quite similar approach as Arpit later discusses. This is a really good quality of a teacher: not giving away the answer, but at the same time, making the students capable enough to arrive at the answers by themselves.
No class ends with a student having some doubt: At the end of each class, there is an open discussion, where all doubts related to the topics discussed are clarified, and then only the class is concluded.
What makes Arpit stand out from other instructors out there is that most of the content discussed in the classes, Arpit had first hand experience building similar systems in production. So, he is teaching from his practical experience.
Recently, he announced system design video library: All the best discussions for each problem statement would be updated here and all the new problem statements covered in the future batches will also be made available to all the students who had enrolled in any cohort. Life-long learning, what else can one ask for
One major learning was: We always think too ahead and complicate things. Repeatedly throughout the course, just how starting simple and iterating over it with common sense leads to good robust designs instills a lot of confidence in students, making them realise designing system is no rocket science, its just taking one step at a time, and being aware of the already available solutions out there and building on top of them.
And finally, like I mentioned in the beginning, apart from just the content of the course, there's a lot more to it: I'll highly recommend another fellow engineer just to be part of the discussions: the enthusiasm with which Arpit discusses in all the classes is something to witness. It takes you back to the point of thinking why all of us got started with software engineering in the first place: to get the sheer joy of building things. Down the line, its very normal to lose motivation or not feel as enthusiastic as we were when we were fresh out of college. Its really one of an experience to witness Arpit's enthusiasm in all these classes, how he has sustained it for so long over these years, and if you look closer, it'll tell you the BTS of making of a great engineer, what sets a great engineer apart from others: because of their ability to find pleasure and being hungry for more always.
Arpit's cohort is the answer for everyone who want to genuinely learn(or grow their knowledge of) how to design highly scalable & resilient systems, not just how to crack system design interviews.
Arpits's approach of problem solving, starting from the ground up, asking "WHY" for every design choice, big or small. Arpit makes you think of that one remote performance improvement scenario and it's this attention to detail, that makes Arpit's cohort truly unique and informative.
Couple the above with the cohort's diverse thought processes and experiences, and you get yourself a fabulous learning environment. I cannot remember one session post which I didn't have any new takeaways/learnings.
The cohort has been the best part about my weekends, and I definitely recommend it to everyone!
What you get - Amazing Mentor, Great discussions/Brainstorming sessions & #AsliEngineering concepts!
I have been a part of Arpit's system design masterclass and I must say, it has been a fantastic learning experience. The course content had great depth and covered topics that are often not talked about in other online resources. Arpit not only focused on the theoretical aspects of system design but also the practical nitty-gritty details of implementing such systems in real life. He also discusses often overlooked components like load balancers, in-memory KV stores, different kinds of databases, etc. in tremendous detail.
The course covers fantastic real-life case studies that help better understand how systems are implemented in the real world. The live interaction and discussions with Arpit and other students were one of the most valuable parts of the course. These discussions encouraged you to dig deep into concepts and also provided interesting ideas and perspectives from other students.
Arpit has been an amazing instructor and mentor who’s always extremely patient in listening to everyone's opinions and questions. He took the time to ensure that everyone's doubts were cleared and always pointed to further readings and things we could explore. The course also includes great career advice sprinkled throughout each session.
Overall, I highly recommend Arpit's system design course. I now feel a lot more confident and have a much clearer view of things I want to explore more as I move forward.
Okay where to even start. I'll try to mention everything in points:
I had some preconceived notions which I realized were affecting my design decisions and I was very rigid about them without questioning why just because it's "recommended" and at trend, I had a default bias that if it's new and shiny, it would be somehow better than existing solutions. The course has helped me break that notion and now at this point I just question everything which has helped me see beyond the marketing that most tools do. If I am not sure how they work behind the scenes, I am sort of skeptical with using them just because the authors call it the fastest or anything else without any data on what they are doing for it.
In the past I mostly used to start with a product problem, build the initial design, face a design problem and ended up making the design problem the core for solving (which is isn't) which I realized is not the good way. Now whenever I am given with a product problem, at every single complication I face, I question my approach with "Can there be a simpler way of doing this, at the core I don't have to solve this design problem, but XYZ product problem. What aspects are not that crucial for the product problem that I can let go of and exploit to make my design more efficient for the cases that actually matter."
I've realized there's always something in a product problem that we can exploit to squeeze out a lot of efficiency. The tradeoff works both ways, if we want some we lose on something. And my goal here is to fit the "want" part with the important aspects of the product problem and "lose" part with the one's that we don't care about much. This is a nice framework that's sort of hard-written in my mind now on how to prioritize an approach with the 1000s of other approach that I could've taken. Have realized that the default developer urge to make every single thing most efficient and perfect in real world is probably meaningless and unattainable.
Being from a non-CS background, I don't have a degree in Computer Science and I've explored and learned everything on my own. One drawback that comes with this that I've noticed is I have gaps in my knowledge, since my learning path was messy. This course has made me realize what some of those aspects which I've worked on throughout the course and I'll continue to do the same.
I had an urge to always look behind abstractions but sometimes when I tried to, it seemed sort of overwhelming in many aspects. The whole course was totally first principle and fundamental based. I am confident about the fundamentals now and I am pretty sure that whenever I am given with a problem now, I'll be able to jump deep into it without getting overwhelmed. I've already started reading papers mid-course and trying to make a habit out of it, and now I just feel like I am not intimidated by the information overload anymore like I used to initially.
And most importantly, realized that jumping into implementation specifics then just making boxes gives more clarity on the actual problems that we tend to overlook which end up biting us later when we start implementing it. That's where the devil lies. I ALWAYS do that now.
Honestly, the value that the course provides, the cost seems very less for it :)
Designing systems the real way. It starts out basic, eg: do you know why we use deleted_at instead of deleting a row from db? Then it goes more complex without forgetting first principles. I've been working at high scale company and there's lots of mysteries of why things are done a certain way. Arpit clears that doubt by going to the fundamental of the systems, from code to bits. Never seen this kind of class being sold out there. It's like having a principal engineer teaching you for 8 weeks.
I'll end this testimony with his favourite phrases:
Arpit's course on system design delivers on its promises and stands out from others. It's based on first principles, providing a deep understanding of why, not just what and how. The practical systems designed make it highly valuable.
Arpit's genuine love for engineering and engaging classes make it a top recommendation for engineers looking to enhance their system design skills (and not just looking to crack interviews).
Arpit's initiative is unique in nature, which helped me in many ways
Streamlined my design concepts, and developed an intuition for different design problems.
Design brainstorming helped me to learn, sometimes instead of jumping into a solution of a presented problem, taking a step back and probing about why to even solve that problem, and finding an alternative non-intuitive route , could simply design and life.
The insights for the design problems , also is helping me question the design discussion at work, helped me grow my stakes.
Helped me increase my focus, because every design decision is a base of next one, and you cannot loose focus.
Arpit makes you believe to implement the system locally, this helped me to wire those solutions in brain, and helping me to evaluate and dig into those solutions when facing real life scale/non-scale production problems.
Lastly , its fun being a asli engineer.
Kudos to you Aprit.
Arpit's System Design Masterclass is the best one in the class. I come from a Monolith architecture background and learned many things in this class on the Micro-services ecosystem side. I have observed the following cool things here:
Our session always started at 8:50 AM, that was a 10 minutes early from the scheduled time. Arpit discusses the feedback, questions, suggestions that were given by anyone from the previous class.
When you are in a session you get a feeling that you are working in team, in a same project. That thing makes you very comfortable and help you to uplift fast.
There is a QnA session that starts at 11:30 and lasts as long as you have anything to discuss.
Arpit always has a logical answer to a questions that you ask him.
Arpit mostly focuses on the Best Practices of doing something.
He always recommend you to build a "Hello World" of anything which you are learning.
He is always available for you whether it's in class, an email, Discord or LinkedIn conversations.
Arpit's energy level is very high. I always get a feeling that he is working 24x7 to uplift his knowledge and then spread it among others. He always keep smiling and encourage us to go extra miles to achieve something amazing in the technology world.
He reads many technical papers from Google Scholar and try to implement shared recommendations. He talks about all those experience in his class as well.
No doubt, He is an "Asli Engineer" who has worked on a very large scale projects, got a practical exposure of everything.
He helps you in the most important aspect, that is "How to think about any problem and then how to take steps for the right solution."
At the end, I will say(Just in case if you are still confused from his course) "Dikhawe pe mat jao, apni akkal lagao(An old tagline from Sprite ad)". Just explore following things and you will get the answer:
That's all from my side. All the very best, Arpit. Whatever you are doing, we are proud of you. And we are very happy from joining your masterclass. Thank you.
Bande mein hai dum!! 🙏🙂
This course is exceptionally well-designed and detailed. Each class provides interactive discussions on the reasoning behind choosing specific designs or technologies, rather than simply jumping straight to solutions for problem statements.
It guides in building a model to systematically design scalable and reliable system. It emphasizes the importance of implementation part of system rather than arbitrary choosing technologies and drawing design diagrams just for the sake of it.
There is soo much to learn from Arpit's vast knowledge and experiences. His enthusiasm and passion for Computer Science reflects through out the course. It is truly the most significant investment I've ever made
In simple words I am pretty sure this course will turn out to be a game changer for me.
As an enginner trying to make a mark, this course lays down what to do and especially how fascinating the world of computers is if you are curious and have a knack of working on your craft. What set this course apart is Arpit is not just a mindblowing enginner but an amazing mentor and someone who is actively trying to change the mindset of enginnering community. This 8 weeks were truly amazing. A huge thanks for what you are doing towards this commuity.
First, this course is really worth paying for. What the course claims is actually true that we Can't find any one of this material for free.
Now, the way the course is structured is the biggest advantage. Arpit starts from building basic systems and then slowly levels up. This helps in developing a deep understanding of concepts. By the end of course, I could understand working of some large systems.
Having this knowledge will surely help in the job.
Arpit's way of teaching is great. This is not a teacher student and boring lecture system. Every topic is discussed thoroughly. We come up with ideas and then solutions are build upon it.
I have learnt much.
I will start from the beginning. I have been following Arpit on LinkedIn, reading his blogs and YouTube videos, etc., since quite some time. What really struck out to me was the fact in every video he was covering topics that were not usually covered by people who were targetting for interviews. Just take a look at his CPython tutorials on YouTube and you will undestand what I mean. You could see genuine interest for engineering and breaking things apart to understand how they work only to put it back together and build it again from the scratch. This is what really caught my interest. You don't see that interest usually in other engineering or CS related blogs. This course was no different.
Right from the beginning he made it pretty clear this is not some course you would use for your interview prep but rather expand upon your software engineering understanding. Even before day 1, he shared topics and reading material saying that you should come prepared after reading these topics in order to understand whats going to be discussed in the classes. The best part that I liked about his classes were, that he approached every system design problem with a Day 0 approach and then build upon the scaling part. I mean, it was not like "Hey, this is the most optimal solution with some jargon thrown around", but rather, "This is our problem, lets build the most basic solution possible, and then try to scale it up and understand concepts while we do that.". His energy is downright contagious when he is explaining difficult topics. I have seen him answer the most basic questions and go to extreme lengths to explain rather difficult topics in a very basic manner. My favourite lecture by far was Distributed ID Generators. Such a simple concept, such a simple design and he just nails every concept in the head. You would genuinely be amazed at his ability to spark that curiosity inside of you to search for the solution yourself.
Additionally, he takes effort to make the class as engaging as possible. It's not like, he will go on blabbering for 2-3 hours continuously and take questions or queries in the end. No, he makes sure that people are engaged, he keeps asking questions about the solution, poking holes and making us question the design ourselves. You must have heard about some Physics/Chemistry/Maths teachers who make the class so interesting and genuinely develop curiosity for those subjects in the students mind. Arpit, does exactly that for system design. He genuinely has a passion for teaching.
I really enjoyed my time in this course. There are lot of things that I have to learn from my end to fully grasp the concepts and implement the concepts that I learned, and thanks to Arpit, I know where to look for them now :D
To summarize, 12/10 would highly recommend this course :D.
I thoroughly enjoyed the entire cohort and got to learn a ton in this journey. Best thing I want to appreciate Arpit for is the discipline in which the classes are carried out. The class starts right in time, it gives equal opportunity for everyone to contribute and he makes sure that all your questions are answered as well. He gives references to read more on what he speaks in the class.
One thing I noticed is for a given problem statement, you get the similar high level articles online but in most of the lectures, I saw a completely different and very simple twist to solve the same problem. And this is just using basic computer fundamentals.
I would just say, THANK YOU to Arpit for bringing this course to life. It takes a lot to learn things yourself and then spread the knowledge to others. Once again, Thank you. it is the best cohort out there on system design.
Arpit knows the ins and outs of a system and can blow your mind with his knowledge. Stay with him till the end the course, do the homework on the pre-reads, practice like he suggests and this course will boost your system design knowledge.
For me, this course has given me motivation to learn more, to think with more curiosity about the system design and question the requirements hard enough to think solutions that might seem simpler but effective.
Arpit's System Design Masterclass Cohort stands out as a truly transformative experience. It's not just another engineering course; it's a journey of breaking down complex systems into intuitive building blocks. Arpit's genius lies in his "prototyping" approach. Here's what sets this cohort apart:
Learning by Doing: Forget theoretical abstractions. We delve into the heart of systems by crafting basic prototypes. This "hands-on" approach exposes the edge cases and intricacies that often go unnoticed. Lego Blocks of Complexity: The magic unfolds as we build simple prototypes. These seemingly basic components become the foundation for understanding robust, high-performance production systems like Redis or Kafka. Suddenly, the advanced becomes intuitive!
Brainstorming Bonanza: Learning extends beyond the curriculum. The cohort fosters connections with like-minded engineers from top tech companies. Sharing knowledge and experiences in these dynamic sessions is an invaluable source of insights. The best part? Lifetime access to this incredible community.
Investment, Not Expense: The initial cost might raise eyebrows. But trust me, within two weeks, the value becomes undeniable. The knowledge, community, and skillset development far outweigh the investment.
Impact Beyond the Classroom: The learning doesn't end with the course. Within weeks, I began applying the first-principles approach at work. My grasp of complex systems improved dramatically. Now, I ask the right questions, tackle challenging problems, and find myself entrusted with more exciting projects.
Lifelong Learner by Design: Arpit's teaching fosters a love for continuous learning. He ignites a passion for diving deeper, a curiosity that propels you to become a lifelong learner. His enthusiasm for technology is infectious, inspiring you to create systems that are not only reliable and robust but also user-centric.
Highly recommended.
Covering system design through multiple building blocks and building intution around reuirements ,tradeooff and constraints becomes very easy to digest and think beyond .Best thing is no jargon ,very simple words can do magic i.e #AsliEngineering
TLDR - Arpit's enthusiasm!
However, if you want my detailed testimonial it is below.
Top to bottom approach based learning - Instead of learning what cache is, what load balancer is. He picks a problem, designs a solution that is acceptable for Day 0, then introduces failures using scale/reliability/... and introduces these components to solve the failures.
Arpit neither spoon feeds you nor gives you just an overview of things. He explains concepts that are theoretical (for example: log based file system) and pushes you to experiment few things to learn yourself (for example: reservation systems using different kinds of locks). Arpit wants you to feel the same magic he felt when implementing these systems.
Every problem feels like a typical interview question and answer, but he has some gotchas or wow moments which make you realize this is so cool (from his past experience). And best part is he tries to push everyone in this direction and make them answer instead of giving the answer away.
Arpit also explains the philosophical side of engineering, why you shouldn't over engineer things on Day 0, how technology inspires from real-world (he explained how flash sale happens offline and how it mimics the similar behavior) and makes it fun throughout.
Though Arpit does 90% of the things, you still need to do 10% which will help you in long run,
I was very skeptical initially to spend so much money on this course mainly because of the availability of free online resources or other alternatives.
Fast forward now, Arpit has completely changed my mind and I feel that it is worth every penny spent because he has showcased the path to learn not only system design but anything in general simply by applying curiosity and first principle thinking. I feel that the knowledge gained would be a great asset for rest of my life. I would highly recommend this course to anyone willing to learn system design with right engineering mindset!
Superb masterclass by Arpit! The curriculum is very well-designed, teaching fundamentals in a bottom-up approach. A few sessions, like designing the Bitcask database from scratch, leave you in awe as you never thought of the basic building blocks of systems in such an in-depth manner.
Various interactive sessions to build systems make you aware of the trade-offs that need to be made while designing real-world systems. I highly recommend this course to someone like me who has always wanted to know how big-scale systems work and wishes to build one.
Arpit's system design course is profound and informative. We didn't just draw boxes; instead, we brainstormed for each and every element added to the design.
It was amazing, covering topics from using S3 as a database layer to exploring ways to enhance the speed of hard drive reads and writes.
Even though the course is coming to an end soon, I now have a roadmap for things to build over the next couple of months.
As a 2-year experienced engineer, I have gained a lot from this course and the exposure i got is just amazing. I learned numerous new terms and useful tools that I hadn't used before. The course provided insights into making decisions that can significantly impact the performance of the entire application at scale.
Kudos to you, Arpit you have created a top-level structured course. I am genuinely excited about building a bitcask clone, will surely share it with you when done.
This session will definitely spark your analytical abilities and give you new ways and a broader vision to approach engineering problems. The best part of this course is that it's a discussion based and hard core interactive one.
The content is too deep and thorough and will require your attention and hands on practice to make the best of it.
Arpit's knowledge and expertise in the field of system design is remarkable and he has a great teaching style that made the concepts easy to understand.
Throughout the course, I learned a lot about designing large-scale distributed systems and gained a deeper understanding of the key principles and best practices that go into creating scalable and reliable systems.
What I appreciated most about the course was how it made me curious to learn more and experiment with designing my own systems. Arpit's real-world examples and case studies helped me to see how the concepts could be applied in practical situations, and his insights and feedback on my own design exercise were invaluable.
Overall, I would highly recommend Arpit Bhayani's System Design Masterclass to anyone interested in learning more about system design and building scalable, reliable systems.
Must have course for every software engineer out there. There's whole lot of stupidity going on in the market around system design interviews. Most of the time, neither the candidate knows it nor the interviewer knows it and it's just nothing but an act.
This course will motivate you to pursue higher objectives in software engineering, you will learn a lot. It will intrigue your curiosity around a lot of things that is actually happening out there and how we can think from first principles to get hold of them. The course will make you fall in love (The lost love) with software engineering.
My perspective on system design has evolved significantly. Initially, I found system design interviews frustrating and often questioned their relevance. However, after participating in this cohort, I have come to appreciate the content and its importance. I am now eager to approach problem-solving from both technical and business perspectives.
Kudos to Arpit for his dedication and hard work in designing and conducting these sessions.
I would like to mention here that -
All in all, thanks for bringing such a nice content to us engineers.
No doubt, Arpit is one of a kind engineer who not only has the deep technical knowledge but also has a great teaching style which just makes this course near perfect. The content chosen by Arpit is also very industry relevant and I would recommend this "pure gold" course to aspiring "asli" engineers.
I joined this course to elevate my skills in system design and this course turned out to be more than that. I found this course very dense and one of the best course ever.
Arpit is highly enthusiastic and deliver the lectures very passionately. He solve the problems bottom-up and tries to make all the participants to probe on the them and focuses on how these will be implemented to the minute level rather than just drawing boxes. After this course it could be concluded that there are no fixed solutions to any problems, it is the product and scale that derives the tech solutions. Also I can assure that this course will break all the stereotype solutions one has.
This course will up-skill you to solve problems with efficiency and frugality. At the end thanks Arpit for the time and helping me.
Though system design is the main title of the course, but there are added benefits you get, such as problem solving, how we should approach an engineering problem and most importantly what should be the way to go for a design doc or a RFC doc. Since the first session I have learned them as well. To question everything, to be no biased and approach a problem. The way Arpit teaches them I have seen myself growing from a junior to an actual Lead Software Engineer, and everyone in my organization appreciates me for those thought process, those question I bring them in any of the design discussions, PR reviews and so on.
I would definitely recommend to go through this course, these few weeks have been transformational from me. The course has made me realize that if the teacher is like Arpit, you can learn anything.
Arpit is an amazing teacher. His way of teaching and approach to problems is something to admire. Spending 23 years in the software industry all I can say is you can only gain from this course. I wish I took it earlier. Arpit truly loves tech, storage and is very committed, considerate and invest time to ensure you get more value than anything.
The course made me question areas where I can do better and gotchas. If I can say that you can learn too. Arpit focus is teaching and discussion this is best approach. I wish him all the best and good speed.
Content quality and value wise - a truely world class course, totally worth the time, money and effort.
Liked:
Cohort based participative approach
pointers for additional readings, todos and explorations
in depth discussions
constant encouragement for implementation
Aprit's has designed the cohort to let you know what you don't know!
It not only focuses on wide range of topics but also goes into intriguing details of 'why' and 'how' of all topics and systems, that coupled with aprit's constant probing for every decision point during brainstorming session, makes you realize why attention to smaller details is important & how it could help you get most out of your design.
For me this course has been a realizational experience about tons of things i am missing out on.
Join this cohort not to learn those fancy terms but to learn the approaches of a better engineer!!!
Everything worked best for me. From pre-reads to brainstorming to developing intuition to all the real life learnings Arpit gives in these sessions. I actually find prototyping the little things very exciting and this is actually cementing my understanding of the concepts. Now I know what I need to do to grow and climb the latter in my org. And finally, I have already read 3 research papers during this time and have started to see the patterns in the design. I plan to incorporate all these learnings in my day day to day work.
And best part is, I have stopped watching videos on System Design in YT, because Now I end up asking , "you implement it first" :D
Loved this course. Arpit brings his vast experience in designing systems to cover some of the most important system design problems. What I found unique about this course was instead of this being a monologue, Arpit encourages brainstorming as part of the course o guide the thought process of how to go about designing these systems. He also placed emphasis on designing simple systems that work as compared to overly complicated systems. The course is well structured in the sense that, Aprit uses concepts discussed in a previous class in topics for a future class, thereby letting people relate the concepts.
Overall the course is very well designed and well delivered and I would highly recommend anyone interested in learning systems design to take this course.
It was an amazing course. Got to learn a lot of new things and the minor details that are generally ignored in all the contents available on the web. I also loved the learning approach which involved discussions and brainstorming which makes a person to think about the problem in depth about all the edge cases. Personally my favourite part was the one on one call with Arpit which helped me make better decision about my career and I feel that's a huge add on to the course which not many people mention.
I found Arpit while doomscrolling through Twitter through a person who has joined his cohort and is boasting about it, and right now I can say he was right. I am a backend engineer with more than 8 years of experience. I just joined this cohort to upskill for my career growth. But I get more than just an upskill. I learn about design thinking, which is very important while designing, maintaining, and scaling real-world systems.
Two major points I'll take from this are:
Everything is a trade-off.
Always think about implementation when making practical design decisions.
And by the way, this is the biggest investment I've ever made in my career. It's totally worth it.
Arpit's course is fantastic for busy dads like me who has shortage of both time and focus. In this world of Short form video, his long form video super clear explanations means the world to me.
I love Arpit's emphasis on
Another advantage of this course is Notes are shared after lecture with precise and comprehensive explanations.
I can continue with this testimonial but will stop in interest of time.
The Way Arpit Designed the course is truly amazing. The course has completely changed the way I used to think before while approaching a problem statement. It has made me realize that simplicity is the key to highly scalable systems.
I wish these sessions continued for some more time. Will definitely miss the discussions. But the course has already showed us how to become an #AsliEngineer. Looking forward to more knowledge materials from Arpit from other sources (Youtube, Papershelf, Blogs).
I joined the cohort to expand and validate my knowledge on system design. Initially I started participating in the cohort and got diverse perspective about the same problem from others. But later I just started listening the cohort, it immensely helped me unlearn, learn and re-learn the topics in depth.
Arpit is highly enthusiastic when it comes to delivering a topic and the best part is you get to hear different ways to approach the same problem. The best part about Arpit was he never jumped into a solution, which helped us push towards thinking different directions, now when I look at any topic or read any blog I have different ways I can approach about not just limited to one system or component. The presentation that Arpit made during the cohort were very well researched and above the bar.
Before attending this cohort I used to think system design is pretty much just putting boxes with appropriate non-function requirements but after attending the cohort I can see/approach systems in a different perspective. I think this was one of the best investment I have made so far.
Highly recommend this cohort!! -- Sarthak
The course is much more than drawing boxes, I really enjoyed it and being an engineer I loved the depth that Arpit went in. He has a vast knowledge and experience on software engineering and architecting. I was surprised to see the way he digged into the systems.
I am really inspired by his content and now i have a different view towards system design. Anyone with computer science degree would surely enjoy and recall their academic days.
I took this course hoping it would help me become a better engineer, and I'm pleased to say it has set me on that path. It truly rewires your thinking, and Arpit's passion for system design is contagious. The way he delves into the details and encourages us to explore all possible angles is a significant advantage.
Your course made weekends something to look forward to, and your patience in answering questions is something everyone can learn from.
I recently completed an eight-week cohort course on system design, and I couldn't be more impressed. The curriculum was meticulously structured, covering fundamental principles and advanced concepts with clarity and depth.
Arpit is not only expert in this field but also exceptional at making complex topics accessible and engaging. The collaborative group discussions enhanced my learning experience, allowing me to apply theory to real-world scenarios. This course has significantly boosted my confidence and skills in system design, and I highly recommend it to anyone looking to advance their career in tech
Literally you would not find such a quality system design master class anywhere. I attended couple of courses out there over internet, however always had a feeling that something is missing. But when I watched some videos on system design from Arpit then I realised that I am enjoying it because the way he covered core concepts behind taking every design decision was the main fun and attractive part. And this was the trigger point for me to enrol for this Cohort based course which is structured beautifully for the duration of 8 weeks.
One thing he always says during session that always think from implementation perspective and assume you are the only one to design and implement that and I guess this is the point when you start to think from all possible cases like would we really need such design decision, what would be pros/cons of it when implementing it.
I have really enjoyed the every bit of the course. Another best thing about Arpit is he never leaves any questions unattended of the session, actually he does not care about extending the meeting time until everyone gets his/her answer. At the end I would say Arpit you are such a mind blowing talent guy with great skills of explaining engineering stuffs, really #Asli-Engineering. I wish I could meet you personally. So best of luck Arpit for your future.
I loved this course. Before starting I was just a beginner at system design but now I feel like I can design any system.
This course is very engaging. There is a lot of active learning. I would think of a solution and discuss it, to soon realise why it is bad (or good). Over the course of this masterclass I have been able to develop an intuitive understanding of not only how to design scalable systems but also why some systems don’t scale, when the system is getting complicated and how to simplify it. Overall the course builds up really well from the simple concepts to more complex ones.
Something really good about this course is that Arpit keeps systems grounded in reality and focuses on implementation as well. So I never felt as if we were building hypothetical systems. In fact I could see myself implementing them.
This course has increased my interest in computer science many-folds. It has made me a better engineer.
Course Stands by the tag line no-fluff engineering !!! Discussions are crisp and in depth. Real Issues are discussed and solved. with not just a tech solution mind set but also a problem solver mind set. I believe that the System Design Cohort has accelerated my learning by at least a couple of years. It's a Great Course and I highly recommend it.
Thank you Arpit for sharing your real world experience !!!!
While the content is top-notch, something which many of my fellow participants talked about, I shall discuss some other invaluable takeaways from Arpit and the System Design masterclass:
Communication - It's a bidirectional communication. It's not Arpit simply giving a out a lecture, it is us the participants chiming with our approaches with Arpit orchestrating the discussion, probing us and questioning us on even the smallest of our design decisions. After this he collates all the points to converge on the approach. After a few sessions, I was accustomed to asking myself - "why I am choosing this database or this communication mechanism over the other, and, can this be done better or more cost-efficiently"?
Intuition - Probably the MOST IMPORANT TAKEAWAY from the masterclass - We do not merely learn how to construct popular systems and use-cases like scaling Instagram notifications, designing Dropbox multi-client sync or designing S3. We learn the way we should approach each use-case considering the storage, network and cost, to name a few. In other words, his teaching helps us build the intuition to tackle the diversity of use cases in system design.
Lego style architecture - Arpit rarely builds a entire system in one go. Rather he dissects them in components and teaches them one at a time, constructing it from the ground up. I was surprised to find that how the components we built in previous weeks could be conveniently plugged in and used as black boxes into complex systems we designed in the later weeks.
Structure - Each session has a discipline - problem statements, followed by discussion and them formal coverage by Arpit. No nuisance or surprise which helps us focus solely on the content and make the best out of the discussion. To add to this Arpil laid out the requirements clearly which made the focus razor sharp E.g. If we are designing Dropbox, today we shall focus on resumable sync, not the entire Dropbox. The communication between client and server could use the Kafka pipeline we built in a previous week.
Pragmatism: Real systems are simple, scalable and cost-efficient - one of the most important takeaways from the masterclass. Theoritically, we can assign huge number of redis clusters or Dynamo DB nodes, but coming to real life scenarios - we could be left bankrupt real soon as these resources don't come cheap. Arpit helps us ponder over these important nuances and guides us how to build optimizations over these.
Start small, add complexity with time and metrics - Another key takeway. Start with the day 1 architecture and add shards/nodes/clusters/load balancers and what not - depending on how the scale grows - is something I learnt from the sessions.
Break it down to the root - Each system we covered, we designed it from the ground up - taking into mind the storage, communication and cost - to name a few. Nothing was taken from granted - I was very amused when we actually discussed how to build a load balancer or design S3 - things i never cared to ponder on.
Diversity of Participants - The June cohort had participants having experience ranging from 2 years to 11 years (approximately), each bringing forth their knowledge and expertise into the discussions.
Continuous feedback - Arpit made available a Google form which could be filled anonymously after sessions, if one had concerns about anything regarding the delivery or content of the session. Arpit read it out and made sure to address this concerns in the upcoming sessions.
Professional growth - Something that took me off guard. Many-a-times, Arpit gave up tips on what design decisions would not optimize and add value to the system we were creating, but could also help differentiate us from our fellow engineers and assist us in climbing the corporate ladder.
Finally, Arpit's love and passion for architecturing systems and appreciating engineering excellence is contagious, to say the least.
Sign up to experience #AsliEngineering at it's truest sense!
Was a great learning experience !! What I learned past 8 weeks I feel I should have taken it sooner. Will definetly recommend others to take it to learn how scale works in real world
Much more than I had expected, really an awsome course would 100% recommend everyone to take the course.
Arpit's titbits about what works and what doesn't in the real world are wonderful. Great course for experienced developers, not only because of the design ideas but it also sparks the interest back for people who might have been jarred by the ever changing software development.
Taking Arpit's masterclass is one the best investment I have done in my learning. In every session you will learn something new. The course is exactly as it is described. #AsliEngineering
Everybody says dig deeper, Finally someone who carved out a clear path on how to dig deeper.
How to keep things simple and elegant.
How to think like a principal engineer.
When not to over engineer.
Reading research paper.
Also how to relate system design with real life process and take inspiration from that and much more.
I feel more confident and empowered. It had made me more clear about which path I need to follow in my career and how to excel in it.
Also, I got lucky to be a part of the first meet-up and meet my amazing peers across all cohorts. Now I feel more obliged to work harder to be an Asli Engineer and live upto the name of this course.
Thank you so much Sensei for making me love Engineering more.
I highly recommend Arpit's Masterclass to everyone. Whether you're just starting out or have years of expertise, each participant walks away with valuable insights and learnings by the end of the program. The structure of the course impressed me greatly, and as promised every week builds upon the previous.
Arpit's emphasis on practical learning and simplifying intricate concepts into engaging building blocks is truly inspiring. One key takeaway from this course for me is building POCs around every concept, and being unafraid to delve into research papers.
Beautifully designed and thought out course for mid-senior level engineers looking to get closer to high level systems and understanding the nuances involved.
Apart from getting the thorough understanding of high level system components like load balancers, API Gateway, etc, this course will help you to learn the way of solving system design problems in general. This is the best part about this cohort based course. Focus on designing traditional as well as non-traditional systems is something that makes this course one of the best choice out there.
Pre-reads, papers, videos and all the other content that is provided throughout the course helps in building and solidifying the understanding of the course content. Kudos to Arpit for putting his heart and soul into not just this course but engineering in general.
Loved all of it!
I think this course is one of its kind, with a lot of learning which cannot be found in this format elsewhere. The course gives enough content to learn for at least an year, at least for early career folks like me.
The course covers significant depth and breadth of topics, and Arpit has hands-on experience on most of these.
There are a lot of non-technical takeaways from the course as well!
Those 8 weeks were incredibly intense, but amazing! We dove deep into the inner workings of complex systems. I used to be fascinated by large-scale products, convinced they were these magical creations. Now, I can analyze any real-world product and understand the logic behind its design. If you're curious and love to learn, this is absolutely for you!
I have gone through various youtube videos and books, but everywhere they will just say use Redis, use MongoDB, use this tech stack etc, but the motive behind using that tech was not mentioned any where. Even if it is mentioned, there was no detailed explanation from basic concept. Also everywhere I saw they designed architecture which is not at day 0. When we get requirement initially in real world, first we think day 0 then we scale and optimize. I learnt a lot from Arpit.
How to start system design problem not even in interview but in real world when we get from product
How to think day 0 architecture and optimize incrementally
How to choose best fit tech from lot of available options
How to choose cost effective tech
Trade off of choosing the tech
Since he built the system, so he has practical knowledge not just randomly throwing some idea. This course helps us to be better software engineer, and software architect etc.
I discovered Arpit's YouTube channel and masterclass earlier this year when his "Designing Notifications for Instagram" video popped up on my feed. My interest was piqued by the manner in which Arpit deconstructed the problem and discussed the design with the audience, and I thus decided to sign up for the August cohort.
The sheer breadth + depth of topics covered by each week's discussions and thoughtfully constructed pre-reads blew me away! Indeed, Arpit's passion for system design and learning in general was infectious. He spent hours clarifying our technical queries about every system we discussed during the course, and in the process, we also learned a lot about the mental models that come into play when designing for scale.
Overall, it doesn't matter if you're specifically preparing for interviews or just curious about system design. This course (as well as the wider #AsliEngineering community) will be invaluable to anyone who wants to become a world-class software engineer. Thanks for the masterclass Arpit!
One of the best learning experiences I ever had.
In the the 8 weeks, Arpit takes the cohort through a series of discussions starting from fundamental ideas around system design and explains how to apply them in a various contexts.
Each week was only better than the previous. The discussions usually started with a clear description of the problem to be solved, followed by an open ended discussion and then an extensive discussion of the optimal solution. The best thing about this approach is that, it helped me understand the thinking that could have possibly gone behind designing a particular system, rather than just understanding how it was designed.
Another aspect is that, most resources on the internet either focused on the high level ideas on designing a system or on the specifics of how to implement a system/feature using a particular product. But, in these course, Arpit blends both these aspects very well. It helped me gain a holistic understanding of the high level design, what products can be used, why and how to use them.
On a personal note, Arpit is a truly curious engineer and a passionate teacher. He is genuinely interested in sharing the knowledge and insights he has gained over the past few years and takes a lot of effort in doing it in the best possible way.
First of all the other testimonials will start making sense. Think of this course a starter to a new journey to love this domain more. The course is intensive and provides plethora of options to think about the design. Also includes mental models and patterns which will help you designing a system, future proofing it. You need to have a two months commitment, and will help if you have watched his channel's youtube videos.
I recently had the privilege of enrolling in the System Design course offered by Arpit, and I must express my utmost satisfaction with the invaluable knowledge and skills I gained throughout the program.
The curriculum is meticulously crafted, providing a comprehensive overview of system design principles and methodologies. From the fundamentals to advanced concepts, the course covers a wide spectrum of topics, ensuring a well-rounded understanding of the subject. Arpit is a seasoned expert in the field, delivered the material with clarity and enthusiasm, making complex concepts accessible even to those with a limited background in the subject.
The course structure for this CBC is curated in a fantastic way. Cherry on top of that is Arpit's passion while teaching (even any complex topic like algorithmic systems) which really helps generate more curiosity while going in depth and brainstorming about anything.
Unlike most videos on YT or essays/blogs which people generally follow for system design, this course contains discussion of very specific systems and goes in depth of what can break at scale and how one should build with these problems in mind. Be it topics like designing your own S3, load balancer, your own search engine, it has been quite a journey to learn how to build such massive systems with first principles.
Another great thing is the community of people attending this course which makes the discussions 10x better. There are very experienced senior engineers attending this course alongside who have built stuff for a huge scale and its pretty amazing not to learn just from Arpit but also their collective experience.
This is one of the best technical training that i have gone through. Course content, structuring, brainstorming during the session, questioning each technical decision are some of the highlights i take away. One other thing i really admire is about the passion for engineering that Arpit brings to the table and its truly infectious and to be honest what we all are infected with Asli engineering :-)I would recommend this course for anyone who really wants to learn the system engineering and not only for Interview preparation. It's a lifetime learning. God bless you Arpit!
It's not a normal system design course; there's a lot of Brainstorming, 2 way communication on what,how and when to use be it any db,infra component. It helps you to understand how to approach it, what to say and what not. Plus you get to know a lot of new things and what other People have implemented and their experience with something.
Overall It helped me to the way i approached system design Problem and i could relate my corporate systems better, how i could implement anything new.
I loved this course a lot and gained a lot of deeper understanding on various topics.
Arpit just doesnt tell what he knows in the form of a theoretical understanding per say, He imbibes his thought process in each of us and puts in a lot of effort to shape us as a person like him. One of the best courses that i have taken so far.
Definitely 100x value for money.
My only complain is not have taken this course earlier in my career as an SDE
Highly recommend taking this course. This course is in very detail about the system. The best part is that you built a habit of thinking about tiny details of your approach while designing a system. Thanks to Arpit for the awesome cohort.
Enjoyed every minute of every session in this course. If you are considering this course then, I recommend you just go for it.
The course is excellent. Arpit covers ground quickly and precisely, but not before challenging everyone to think for themselves. The level of detail covered is amazing. You will feel far more confident of designing a complex, scalable system after doing this course.
This is one of the finest courses I have ever read on System Design.
This course is like the bible of System Design problems, you can see lots of problems are there. It explains all core components that are involved in the system along with a detail explanation.
Here you got to know all the core components used in the system along with that proper estimation of users accessing the service. truly #asliEngineering for an engineer.
This is one of the go-to courses for a System Design course. Arpit goes length and breadth of the Systems to help the attendees understand the system's nitty grit-ties.
I am thoroughly enjoying the course and am already confident that I can think in the right direction when I am about to build any System. I went through many youtube videos, udemy courses and individuals but never have I ever got this feeling of a eureka moment.
I will recommend this course to anyone who wants to build scalable systems.
Great Course to Deep Dive into real world System Design and the way the brain storming is conducted by Arpit around them is really interesting.
Very informative and easy flowing course. Relevant for people across various experience levels as he covers a wide range of topics from practical experiences and you never know what clicks for you.
Arpit's knowledge and experience is apparent in the way he answers questions with ease.Highly recommend this course for anyone interested in learning about system design.
The best and most fun system design masterclass you can find!
There is no spoon feeding or one way communication from Arpit. The participants are encouraged to think about the problems, propose different solutions and learn from each other.
I enjoyed all the sessions and definitely learnt a lot. Thank you Arpit for the wonderful discussions!
Let me start by saying this course "Exceeded my expectations". The course starts from building blocks and picks up traction.
I love the way Arpit gets into minute details and makes you ponder over design decisions. I also appreciate how he has structructed the overall course and also how he manages the discussions during the course. Arpit's passion for technology will rub onto you at some point during the course because he makes you apply concepts in a very interesting way.
So if you take this course, here are a few TIPS to get the maximum out of this course
Participate in the design discussions. You won't lose much by holding yourself back and there is no one to evaulate your knowlege or lack of it. So put yourself out there.
Keep note of all the doubts you get during the session and make sure to ask them during end of the session where you have Q&A or in the discord channel.
Try to read all the pre-reads, over 90% of it will make sense to the larger audience
Think through implimentation when you take up any design on any system, that is the only way you can find out how to apply by first principles
Be curious!
One of the best learning experiences I've had, and I'm so grateful to be a part of this amazing cohort. The course is filled with all the valuable insights and now my approach towards the system design has changed for the better.
Embracing multiple approaches, prioritising simplicity, and being mindful of trade-offs are now key principles ingrained in me. Additionally, I've gained a lot of knowledge from the brainstorming sessions.
Thank you Arpit for this incredible learning journey! I would highly recommend this course to others.
Firstly, thank you so much for amazing 2 months of learning. Before I took this course I was very clear that I did not want to take this course to prepare for interviews but to be a better engineer and I am 1000% satisfied with this decision. The best part about this course is that it builds the foundation for implementing and designing real world systems by going deep into actually implementing it. I am motivated and energized to read more research papers, books, blogs, and of course your content :)
Thank you again and I am determined to continue this learning.
Course is sooo structured and organized.....first time have taken a paid course and this is completely worth every penny
This is an awesome session that covers diversified topics on system design and engineering. The session helps us to think and build our intuition on building scalable & resilient systems.
It is a very well-organized and well-conceived course. As a result of following the course, I learned the concepts and built on them with minimal questions. It was well organized, well paced, and taught me what I was looking to learn. It's already helping me at work.
Brilliant course who wants to understand system design with real world problems happening. Really helped me to design real world systems.
Arpit is one of the very few who go into the depth of the system design making sure the design is truly scalable and talks about all the edge cases which I have struggled to find with any other youtube video or course. His cohort has definitely made me a better software engineer in span of only 2 months.
What differentiates Good Engineer from a Normal Engineer? Insane Curiosity, Extreme focus on Implementation, Simplicity and Cost Efficiency.
Arpit's curiosity is unmatched, it also made my curiosity reach to new levels. Focus on implementation leads you to think hidden edge cases which might not be found on writing boxes and arrows on paper, simplicity for avoiding unnecessary bottlenecks, cost efficiency because why waste?. Would recommend to join if you want to see how things really work at scale, how decisions are made and just how beautiful engineering is.
Also won't forget this line "Ay Complex, Simplify kar na!\
Not everyone get the experience of designing upon every other aspects. If you're one of them and ever wondered how most famous systems of our time has been designed then this course is for you. This for sure push you to think inside the bigger box and raise the bar. What I personally liked is the FOCUS on How Stuff Works behind the scene!
No Fluff Just Stuff - highly recommended!!
There are several resources available for system design out there, but none as good as this course. The best thing I like about the cohort is that Arpit doesn't say this is a system and this is how we design it. We design the system through class participation, and that made me feel I don't need to prepare for system design interviews.
Now, the questions feel less like a question and more like a discussion
Joining this system design cohort was the best decision I made. Getting to know so much about system design and that too in depth.
After having this course, my understanding towards designing a system is totally changed. #AsliEngineering #LovedIt
Arpit's System Design course is a must for every engineer who aspires to work on Distributed Systems. Best Part about his course is that, the entire process is incremental.
He will start by as simple as a table schema and then will scale up the entire architecture, along the way introducing new components with reasoning behind each and every design decisions. It was highlight of my weekends. I loved this course and I believe it was my best investment of 2022. Thanks Arpit :)
Super! Thorough and useful discussions in every session. Topic choices are great, it covers fundamentals and advance aspects of systems. Thanks Arpit. Learnt a lot!
Be open minded and please participant in the discussions to make the most of your time.
i loved the course. its delivery, course structure and content is very well done. i am at mid senior position in my carrer as a backend developer. i am sure these videos will help me grow into a competent software architect.
I am so so grateful that I joined Arpit's Course on System Design, though he says it's a System Design Masterclass, I rather found it more of a "How to break down and solve complex problems masterclass", since the scope it much more than system designing. It's not just about interviews, it is about learning, and passion for building stuff that creates a long lasting impact. It was a priceless experience for me. Highly Highly Recommended!!!
Arpit is really good at making complicated things easy to understand. He helps you grasp difficult concepts from the ground up and makes you curious to learn more on your own. He's super patient, always ready to answer tons of questions from everyone.
On top of that, Arpit challenges you to think about your ideas and decisions more clearly. He wants you to explain why you think a certain way and pushes you to think creatively, not just in terms of engineering but also what's best for the product or business. Then, he helps turn those thoughts into smart engineering solutions.
I am extremely thankful to Arpit for everything that he has helped me unlearn, learn and relearn in this short span of time. This has been a very compressed and yet an extremely power-packed course. Arpit's lucid style of explaining, pushing one to think through the answers, questioning everyone on their choices and decisions, making them think right and in the right direction is unparalleled.
Arpit's humility, his inquisitiveness, work rate, discipline and time management makes this even better. This is something that every engineer should go through.
Although being from a mostly front-end engineering background with some level of server side, cloud and devops experience, I joined Arpit's course as I wanted to level up my understanding of system design, to become a better engineer. And the experience really transformed my thinking on building systems and get the fundamentals right. I was able to design a system in my project with confidence after attending two weekends of live classes. The classes also helped bring back some memories about the topics learnt in college and helped to connect the dots as to how those fundamental topics are used in the real (Asli) world system design.
Thank you Arpit for this wonderful course and engaging cohort!!!!
Arpit's System Design Master class is one of the best system design course out there. It covers a wide range of topics and very well curated.Starting from basic foundations of system design, by the end of the course we will be comfortable to design & understand large scale systems. Will learn how to design from day 0 architecture and gradually scale & optimize it.
Arpit's teaching is excellent & top notch. The course will help us in becoming better engineers and will fall in love with learning systems in depth. Highly recommended..!!
Arpit's System Design class starts from first principles and builds up in every session.
This is not focused on clearing interviews but understanding the system design fundamentals and how to use what you learn to come up with simple and elegant systems. His approach is to build the smallest setup first and then keep iterating on it as we dive deeper.
He is extremely focused on the why and keeping things simple. The class pre-reads are great resources and he covers a variety of systems every week.
He enjoys teaching the class and it is very evident the amount of thought, research and effort he has put into this offering. Highly Recommended!!
It is a great course to understand and refresh the building blocks and work on a lot of design problems from the ground up. It helps us to identify the basic concepts that case be used on a range of concepts and use them to build the popular systems we interact with daily.
I found this course very useful for my day-to-day activities. this course made me to think in different directions for every problem we face. Appreciate Arpit for coming out and explaining in detail. I would recommend everyone to take this course and enhance your system design and distributed system knowledge.
A great course which ignites the thinking process behind a system.
The thing that amazed me most in this course is Arpit exactly knew what kind of question we ask and he has proper answers to all our questions, doubts and suggestions in brainstorming sessions.
Best system design course out there. Far beyond my expections.
This course triggers your creativity while you brainstorm in group to design a system, and you feel like sharing your ideas that are well received by the instructor and the discord community of #AsliEngineering. What I like most is how we discover a complex edge case even in a moderate use case and solve it together.
Your Cohort are desinged Spot on! With the right flow,Pace and Control. What concept should come in where and in which sequence and what depth. Very Well done!! I have already told 8 of my friends working at very senior levels about this cohort! My deep Gratitude to you!! A lot to learn from apart from the tech knoweledge. I will keep on looking at your new concepts always!
Course helped to improve my system design skills. It also helped me to connect the dots at current organization. I was able to apply 2-3 concepts immediately at my current organization and improve the performance. This course is must if you want be better engineer.
"There is no single answer to any design problem." This is something which everyone will agree upon, still I have only seen courses where the tutor explaining that one perfect design for a particular problem. This is not the style of this course. The most important thing I learned was the basics and how to "think" like an engineer. This boosted my confidence and now I am not afraid of any new problem which I might face in interview or real life.
This is one of the best courses that I have ever taken. Arpit takes you through a journey of building a real time system right from basics to advanced, where you learn to evaluate pros and cons of every decision made at every single step of design.
I did learn a lot of system design patterns through this course which none of the courses/videos out there would cover. I feel myself more confident approaching a system design problem after taking up this course. Highly recommended and kudos to Arpit for doing a great job and helping out the community out there through sharing his knowledge.
When I joined my conpany right after college, I have learnt many things which were not taught in college and I thought these are supposed to be learnt through experience and no one teaches you. And most of the architectural decisions were taken by senior developers and I used to have no clue on why they did that. But I have came across your youtube videos and immediately got hooked. This course is something which is designed to help you understand what are the key factors to consider to design a system. Believe me, from being clueless -> I have understood our company's architechture much better and was able to suggest improvements in no time. I strongly recommend this course to anyone who is planning to get better at design systems. Arpit really has a jovial way of teaching. Can't recommend this course enough. And the people in the cohort share great resources, thankyou everyone for participating, it was a great learning experience.
Highly recommend. Don't think you can find a real course teaching System Design at this level of depth in the wild. Best investment I've ever made in my career. It helped me to triple my current salary recently. It's very practical, well-structured, every design decision has been made out of concise and thoughtful thinking. This course is heavy to me personally, and definitely will watch the recordings over and over again as I believe there's tons yet to be learned. This is a long-term investment for sure.
It was a great course.I was afraid of system design earlier , but your insights and approach to solve a problem made it appear simple!!!
An amazing course which probes you to approach a system design problem from all perspectives (engineer, architect, product manager).
It imbibes the thought process of taking a problem from Day-0 to its eventual architecture, via a discussion rather than a one-way flow of information.
The aggregated information in the course highlights the extensive research done behind the scenes.
Special thanks to Arpit for such an enriching course.
So glad that I signed up for this course. Arpit has a very well curated topics which he covers in depth. From small nuances to big design decisions. This course has helped me move away from a developer mindset and look at systems at a holistic picture. I can now relate to the designs of so many systems I helped in developing.
This is the best cohort course when you want to understand how systems are actually designed and built. The course is designed in such a way that you will never feel this is beyond your grasp.
Every system starts with a naive architecture and you will be amazed to see the end system after discussing all tradeoffs. If you can't relate to this course now, You will definitely find this course helpful somewhere in your career.
On a personal note, I was being introduced to several jargons and components which play a key role in Designing the systems. You are doing a Fab Job Arpit! Thanks a ton :)
I can only say that taking this course has been a really great decision. It has far exceeded my expectations. I've never seen anything on system designs that goes this deep into talking the 'what' 'why' & 'how'. What makes this cohort even better is that it's not your classical 'watch your instructor' instead it's more inclusive you'll have all your doubts answered.
Great learning experience. Absolutely worth it.. Loved the content and brainstorming sessions.. I would definitely recommend it.
I almost envy Arpit. Not because of his financial success, (there are many financial successes out there for one to get envious) but because he is so in joy when he talks, teaches and brainstorms system design. Kind of like the Ikigai. Anyways thanks a tonne for explaining system design so beautifully 🙏
This course is certainly the best for anyone who wants to go in-depth on the High-level design of multiple scalable architectures in different domains.
I had done one-on-one with Arpit and come to know that this guy is really passionate about learning new stuff in the depth and finds real joy in teaching other people this amazing stuff. His funda is "Ek hi zindigi hai, seekh lo jitna seekh sakte ho". He regularly reads research papers to go in-depth just so that he can understand and make others understand.
Coming back to the course, since a lot of iterations have already happened over the past 1 year and I have also attended the March-April cohort, I can ensure you that you won't go empty-handed no matter how much experience you have. You will definitely get to know the behind the scene working of some of the amazing systems. For me certainly, this is one of the best investments on myself in the past 2-3 years.
Undoubtedly one of the best educational content! Arpit’s love towards system design is infectious. One will definitely fall in love with system design after his cohort. He makes complex concepts look very easy with his good analogies which will make core concepts stick to mind for long time.
Thanks Arpit for doing such great job! Definitely blockbuster movie for system design must attend 😊😊😊
Thanks for the amazing course. The amount of depth and breadth you are going into for each problem statement is just mind-blowing. You are a real inspiration and a true gem. Thankyou very much for spreading the knowledge. The cohort-based structure of the course really helps.
It was amazing to see how each and every time you align the thoughts of all the participants into the most ideal solution. Learned many new concepts during the last 2 months. Wishing you and your family all the very best!!!
I would recommend this course to everyone who are still looking out for mentors who can teach how amazing engineering is. I joined this course not from an interview perspective but i wanted to know the bigger picture on how different systems are scaled to a million users, and definitely i got to learn a lot.
I can confidently say Arpit's approach to teach system design is exceptional, you cannot find this kind of content on any youtube video or MOOCS. Personally, this has been an inspirational 2 months for me where I got to know exactly how we can approach engineering problems and what resources to go through to brush our skills. His passion for engineering is contagious and if you want to know Asli engineering inside out then this is a must join cohort.
This course was the highlight of my weekends for the past two months. I’ve been exploring system design content for quite some time and after going through a lot of content, I must say Arpit does full justice to the time people invest in his course. Arpit does not shy about going to a detailed analysis of any system, he makes sure that every possible doubt that comes into your mind is resolved during the session and later in the open forum session. I found this very useful as Arpit’s extensive background in industry and academia gives him the ability to go as in-depth as you want when answering your questions. Be it databases’ internal implementation, operating system quirks or hardcore computer architecture question, Arpit knows his stuff really well.
Small cohort size and interactive brainstorming sessions helped me to get quick feedback on my design decisions. This made sure that the session was not just a one-sided lecture but an exchange of ideas amongst the peers. The cohort had people form different domains and varying experience - I used to search for the technologies and jargons people floated in the discussion which gave me an amazing exposure.
Initially, I joined this course to become comfortable in system design interviews but later I realised that the main intention of the course is core engineering and detailed analysis of systems, which you might miss if you’re simply studying system design for interview purposes. Cracking interviews is a favourable byproduct of this course and not the sole intention. Thanks Arpit, I thoroughly enjoyed this course.
The course lives upto the hashtag #AsliEngineering, and not just cracking interviews. The depth and nuances that Arpit covers in each system that we design is worth the time spent on the course. The add-on benefits of a great community and networking is also great.
This course definitely lived up to its name - VERY LEGIT - "#AsliEngineering". These classes became the highlights of my weekends.
Arpit has designed the course in such a way that you will be able to relate the content of every class to its next one. He wouldn't straight up give you a solution with random jargon nor would he recommend using one technology over other without proper reasoning. He rather conducts brainstorming sessions where he nudges us to come up with solution. While doing so, he discusses the tradeoffs, he encourages to see the patterns and reuse the solutions discussed/built in the previous classes.
I highly recommend taking this course. It is a course worth investing your money and time on.
This course challenged my fundamental understanding of systems designing & made me appreciate the beauty, intricacy & logic of software at scale. Arpit is a natural teacher & passionate tech evangelist who will start from the ground-up & then refine your concepts with this hands-on-engineering journey.
To start with, this has been one of my best decisions in life to join Arpit's cohort. Despite there being "too many sources for system design on the Internet" as people say, I haven't seen a single course or educator talk about an in-depth dissection of a given system and questioning different alternatives for even small micro-decisions, which are very critical and which Arpit covers in great depth for all the problem statements.
The aim throughout the course is to build intuition and a strong foundation. With a cohort-based model, learning increases multiple folds and it feels like a day-to-day technical discussion that you have with senior folks at work, which makes it the most fun part of all.
There are people with varied experiences here, and you get to learn from their experiences as well as get to connect with them, which is an added advantage. The "cost - driven development" mantra, as Arpit says in every design discussion, is an aspect that I have seen no one touch upon, and it is something that leads to very exciting discussions and approaches.
Arpit's energy and passion for computer science are infectious and something that rubs off on everyone in the cohort, leading to great brainstorming sessions. I would personally recommend this course to anyone who loves backend engineering and computer science in general to be a part of great technical discussions, not just for the sake of interview preparation, but to learn and have fun while building systems!
At least I did for the same reason :)
Arpit has the knack of breaking down a very complex problem into simpler and smaller understandable components. The problem statement followed by the solution is communicated very clearly and in a structured way. The live sessions unfold so beautifully that you don't realize that you have been listening to someone for 2.5 hours straight.
One of the nicest attributes about Arpit other than being brilliant at his field is that he shares the knowledge without being condescending. My approach to work has certainly changed after the cohort. Thanks for the knowledge, keep up the great work.
Honestly, this is one of the best courses I have been in till date. I thought I would probably know like 60% of the topics, but as and when we are completing this, I can be sure that I knew no more than 30% of topics discussed.
Some topics, systems, designs are so fabulous, using the same things we use everyday, and seeing them work and make our systems fault tolerant were mind blowing.
The delivery of the lectures, making it interactive, the efforts in building the notes, discussing all the points and also teach us more than engineering - How to be a "better" engineer and ask the right questions, think on the right lines is what motivated me the most and I got from this cohort.
This I feel would make me go a long way in my personal career space, just because of the "mode" of content delivery. Seeing youtube videos / reading articles or theory doesn't make sense till the time you actually solve a problem. Even if these were on calls, they looked like actual Product Development calls we have in office where we design something from scratch, thinking about everything.
Thanks for the efforts you put in and helped me and the community. :)
I will highly recommended taking System Design masterclass by Arpit, on the very beginning you will realize how fun it can be to learn such a advance topic in such a organized manner, and Arpit is the only bhaiya you should follow if u want to learn #asliengineering.
I found Arpit through linkedin posts, where he shares technical insights about db, architecture and system scalability. Later I get to know about his system design course and I want to join that immediately as I already had some idea about his knowledge depth and passion for teaching. After joining the course I'm exposed to many new concepts which I didn't know previously also the passionate way of teaching kept the whole batch engaged and helps us all to gain in-depth knowledge of system design.
I would recommend this course to any tech enthusiast who has interest in system design. Thanks Arpit for such a great time.
One of the most useful courses I have ever taken as a software engineer.
There are a lot of system design resources out there but I found all of them to be lacking depth. This course had both breadth as well as depth.
I feel much more confident while designing real-life systems, both at my job, and for interviews. This course improved my intuition on what design patterns and technologies to use for a problem that might appear repeatedly in different systems.
Impressed with the passion and energy Arpit brings to the sessions consistently. Lastly, grateful to be a part of a cohort that shared lots of creative insights and ideas. Beware that the course is quite fast-paced and a few years of experience would help you absorb it in a far better way. I will definitely need to revisit the recordings once :)
Arpit's enthusiasm for teaching is contagious. It's not a course, but it gives you a glimpse into the realm of system design. It gets better every week, and it's brilliantly curated. It was one of the most memorable experiences of my life.
There will be no slides or presentations, but there will be effective whiteboarding sessions. It helped me have a better knowledge of system design patterns. It's not every day that you get to learn from engineers like Arpit, so I consider myself fortunate.
Arpit is a rare find. If you haven't already signed up for this masterclass, please do so right now.
Finally a course that's not obssessed with cracking interviews and is about actually building something. My biggest learning from this course is that it introduced me to engineering blogs and the ocean of information that's lying in there.
I will highly recommend everyone to Arpit's System Design master class and I feel that it was one of my best decision in my life to attend his master class.
I am in my early stage of my career, i took a bet on this cohort just our curiosity and desire to learn how to make things work at scale. Trust me, It is a gem a of course, worth investing your time and money. It is not like any any other course out there, reason Arpit. Aprit has simplified and presented the concepts in such a way, improved understanding concepts & whitest covering design complexities. It has broaden my understanding to approach design problems at scale. It's not everyday you get to meet and learn from Engineers like Arpit, i am glad that i meet and learned from.
Really great course. Highly recommended specially for people starting out to learn system design.The course is well structured and covers many major concepts in great detail.Also, Arpit is awsome at expaling stuff.
Arpit's passion towards teaching and depth is designing systems is simply amazing. His teaching and way of presenting concepts always brought an 'Aha' moment. The course is so nicely organized and linking concepts from earlier sessions into future sessions helps to correlate and augment learning. I would 100% bet my time and money on this course anytime.
I have worked and also learnt from Arpit in the past, and have always enjoyed it.
I wanted to refresh my knowledge and learn more about system design and I am very happy with my decision. Even though I had a busy travel schedule, I would always tune in somehow to join in the live class to feel the team discussion vibe again.
I love the energy he has, and the attitude towards problem solving.
Questions and discussions are highly encouraged and the ecosystem he has built towards this community is amazing.
8 weeks of intense master class - covering so many different aspects of system designs, something rarely most of us get to touch in real life even with years of experience.
Highly recommented. This is #AsliEngineering.
Maza aaya. insert Rahul Gandhi meme here
The course makes you go back to basics and learn the foundational concepts of how systems work. It teaches you how to approach system design in a manner that makes it seem natural. I can definitely say that it's helped me develop an "intuition" for designing systems at scale. Especially designing systems with compliance/analytics in mind, and understanding the kind of tradeoffs that could be made at different levels of scale (startup vs enterprise) etc. The learning from rabbit holes you fall into while reading about something you heard in class is a "feature" in itself.
Truly a ‘Masterclass’ in Systems Design. Arpit is very passionate about the subject and it has been awesome learning from him. Highly Recommended!
The course is amazing. I had a lot of doubts about designing system and most of there were solved. Arpit is amazing in taking time to address the doubts. He has given a good thought in creating the structure of course. This course is one of the best investment for a software engineer to upgrade his system design skills.
This course is a gem! Arpit's way to telling complex concepts in an intuitive and simple way is sign of an amazing teacher! The brainstorm discussions are such a good learning time! every class discussion was like an aha moment! You would get to know such complex system being built using the same patterns as building blocks. The course helped in building my confidence and technical depth :)
I encountered Arpit’s course in November and enrolled in January cohort. I was really hyped about this course as I had previously seen his “How to scale notifications”. The best part about the course is the first principles thinking, the intuition behind why a particular decision is taken in designing the system. Finally a course which doesn’t black box anything, and gets into the depth of each and everything. Highly recommend!
Given the flood of courses on system design, I was quite cynical of another system design course and investing time in it. Arpit was quick to debunk that this wasnt a course but a cohort, this wouldnt be a course that aims to equip you to better at interviews but looks at the fundamentals of systems and teases out patterns that could be applied everywhere.
True to his pitch, the cohort went into deep details of why systems behave the way they do & how to develop a framework for building these systems. There are lots of engineers who know a lot of tech, but only a handful who can articulate it and even few who can weave a story and a structure out of it - Arpit evidently is part of the latter. His ability to connect the dots, probe on the blind sides and massage the concepts out of the pain points spoken in discussion is quite marvellous.
The course is so crisp and detailed. It was a terrific experience to be join this course.
Arpit has really put out a lot of efforts in creating this course and knows in-depth of each system. It covers each design in a great depth with multiple solutions for each case and thats the best part of it.
The way Arpit first creates a base and then puts everthing on top of it which makes a design intuitive for everyone and very easy to understand. Concepts is focused here so that later when some new requirements come, there will be a way to figure out on own about how to design it.
Arpit’s cohort involves
A collection of current and highly relevant software design issues of scale, in the industry
Problem solving from simple to more complex takes students through all nuances and gives deep understanding
Brainstorming sessions where everyone participates with their thoughts with enough space for questions and clarifications
Arpit’s enthusiasm and his conversational style that is friendly and encourages participation
Both online as well as offline modes are super convenient for busy, working students
A rare course that contributes to engineering maturity in the tech space. Highly recommended, especially for experienced techies! It is one of the best re-learning decisions I made in the recent past.
Being form non-CS background and having worked for 6 years in semiconductor domain, I did not have any prior experience of designing/working on large scale systems. When I switched domain, I also decided to take this course and I have enjoyed it throughout the span of 2 months.
It's not just the content of the course but also the way Arpit delivers it. He always starts from day 0 architecture and gradually builds on top of it. There are no buzzwords thrown around or random assumptions made. You will not only learn new things but also get some of your preconceived notions corrected. Also there were many "wow" moments during the course which are invaluable. There are tonnes of YouTube videos on system design but none of them come remotely close to this cohort.
The only negative feedback I have about the course is that it ends.
Arpit is a brilliant and passionate engineer who will help you with building the intuition behind each and every system design he discusses. He makes sure everyone understands the problem and also the live brainstorming sessions have good participation. His cohort is attended by brilliant and well accomplished people themselves which makes this cohort all the more valuable.
I can confidently say I lost the fear of system design now because of this cohort.
You might ask, is it HLD, LLD, or the internals of all major systems? It's real engineering at its best, thanks to the precise problem statements which artfully places foundational topics at the core of scalable systems. As a whole it covers all the standard practices along with extensive discussions about approaches so that no doubt remains unresolved.
Thanks to these discussions, I now have a clearer picture of thinking about and observing the recurring patterns in scaling systems better than ever, along with memories of interactions with peers having years of experience and wisdom.
One of the best courses i have ever attended. Arpit's knowledge in system design is commendable and his research and composition in this course material is concise and to the point that it provokes several parallel thoughts and gives you a ready to use tool-kit to tackle any types of system.
Most of the system design courses out there mostly talk about company driven architecture such as how Netflix tackled this problem vs how Google handled this. But the beauty of this course is that every class starts with one basic problem statement, common design pattern, different area of concerns( front end, backend, caching, DB), separation of concerns, then deep dive into one of the most relevant and problematic areas you could face in that type of system, how to solve them and then finally go to details about how this use-case could be applicable to these many systems.
This gives you a building blocks to handle any system based on the need rather than sticking to the pre-defined approach about how one leading company did it.
Another best part of this course is the classroom discussions:- 30-40 highly skilled and driven engineers are coming together in one forum, asking questions, sharing their knowledge and discussing system design problems which can not get any better.
I have worked as an Applied Scientist for 7 years and I didn't have a lot of exposure to system design. I wanted to learn more about it. I had taken a paid course earlier which mostly focused on cases and just gives the final design without discussion. This course is different in that sense. It kinda builds towards the final solution and while doing that teaches a few concepts in the middle. Lots of discussions in between the lectures.
I am more than happy with what I spent and what I got in return. I want to build an advertising system and I hope this course has given me great direction. Beware this course asks for a lot of hours which I struggle to find time for.
I would highly recommend this course to people not just because of what it teaches but because of the pacing. Pacing is one of the most essential thing in learning anything and this course does a good job at that.
One of the best courses out there on system design. I really liked Arpit’s way of explaining complex problems in simple way. Course Structure is well organised , alongSide you get to learn with amazing set of people. Course Certainly made me a better engineer. I am already using Arpit's teachings at my work.
And the cherry on top - I was able to crack SDE 2 interview at Walmart, Apna, Swiggy, BukuWarung, DealShare.
My best investment ever :)
Arpit is a gold standard as an instructor. The discussions are on-ground and will discuss the things which are beyond 101. I have been directly able to map a few lectures ( read use cases ) to my job. I am a frontend engineer and most things are a learning to me. But having experience of system design implementations with me peers, it will surely take an edge.
More than the courses, you will be overwhelmed by his enthusiasm, clarity with breadth and depth. I believe, I have found the person I can look upto and have a chat about the things which actually improve the internet. I will invest anytime in a person which shapes the thinking patterns than just delivering the knowledge.
First time had the great experience with someone providing online education. Live class interaction really helped. Not only learned from you Arpit, but almost everyone in the class. Not only you learn the concepts from Arpit, but you also learn the way he learns, and it's contagious. One of the best decision I had taken to join Arpit's cohort.
The system design course by Arpit is a great one for a number of reasons. It covers a wide range of topics, design paradigms and building blocks necessary to build a distributed system. For every system design topic discussed in the sessions, it is built from ground up starting with a simple model (which everyone brainstorms together) which is then iteratively enhanced to overcome limitations until the end design meets all the requirements such as scalability, availability etc. This exercise in my opinion is the most useful thing that I got from the course as it builds such a great intuition when you have to design a complex system from ground up and when you look at some popular distributed systems in use, you will know how they were built or what design patterns might have been used.
Since this is a cohort, you benefit greatly from the discussions that happen during the brainstorming segment of the class where you learn from other people’s diverse experiences and of course the 1:1 sessions with Arpit are invaluable.
Overall, I would highly recommend this course to anyone, at any stage in their careers who is interested in learning how to design distributed systems. This is indeed a fun course.
Course was an eye opening for me with lots of real world experiences that we face while implementing systems.Every session need to be revisited so as to understand effectively.Arpit makes sure to walkthrough the science behind building the system design.I simply loved the course and this implants a curiosity of learning everyday within us.
I had initially registered for the 2nd cohort, but did not end up going through with making the payment as I thought it was too expensive. Now, after having finished the course as part of 4th cohort - I think this was probably the best investments I have made in my life !
This course taught me to think of system design from a first principles perspective. It taught me about how to use smaller simple systems as reusable building blocks for larger systems. Arpit's enthusiasm is infectious and he's an excellent teacher. I learnt a lot from not just him but also from other people in the cohort. 👌🏾
The breadth of the systems covered as part of Cohort is really amazing. I learned so many systems which I didn't have much clue about earlier like Stream processing, Log Structured storage and many more. The enthusiasm with which Arpit conducts the sessions helps create curiosity.
The most important part is that Arpit helps build the intuition to learn system design and uses building blocks to build systems gradually. This cohort is a value addition for experienced professionals to build Large scale systems and develop know-how for making trade-offs for design choices.
Arpit is a passionate individual who teaches one of best system design course, his explanation comes from real implementation and exposure to the problem. He makes sure that individuals in his cohort develop critical thinking when approaching system design.
I would highly recommend his course for any one who tries to build systems to scale.
The way Arpit delivers his content shows his experience, enthusiasm and love for the topics he is teaching. He shares his experience over multiple years of career and reading multiple blogs, papers etc. with everyone. The problem statements discussed are very practical and cover advanced topics related to large scale system design very well.
He takes a pragmatic approach to the problems and comes to the solution via foundational principles. The assignments are quite challenging so be ready for a lot of fun building them!
Taking this course has turned out to be one of the best things I've ever done in my software engineering career.
Arpit has changed everything for me and helped me to develop intuitions for designing the systems at scale. This course was a perfect mixture of theory that we needs to know for understanding and designing massive systems, and real world examples for implementing those concepts.
This course is not like any other courses out there, its not one way video based communication as it is cohort based, it provides the experience of solving the problem in real world like a team of 45 engineers working together to solve a problem which in itself was a awesome experience .It was a great learning experience for me and would recommend the course to everyone who wants to develop understanding of how massive systems functions.
In this course, you will learn topics and building blocks that will help you design any system. Along with this, you will also get to know the trade-offs of one component over the others.
There is always something new to learn things like Live streaming using CDN, implementing the KV store using MySql, and building a word dictionary were eye-opening for me.
The two best parts about the course are the discussion and brainstorming between the amazing folks of Cohorts and the 1:1 mentorship from Arpit.
Overall if you are prepping for interviews you will get an amazing head start. Or if you want to get better at system design in general this is the best thing you have got.
Absolutely, worth the money and time, highly recommended 🙂.
I had come across the essays written by Arpit in his blog and the system design videos on his YouTube channel, which were quite detailed and offered a crisp explanation, due to which I decided to join the cohort. The entire cohort is designed in a way that the concepts learned during the initial few weeks get used in the later parts. I loved Arpit's methodology of not just approaching a system from a bird's eye view but instead going into details of how it could be implemented as well, and trying to dissect every aspect of what can go wrong, and brainstorming over how it could be dealt with.
Even in a problem that seemed simple at the surface, there was always something new to learn. The cohort structure enabled a great community of folks to come together and collaborative learning happened. The mechanism of teaching is very different from several other courses or content that I have gone through in the past. It was ensured that none of the questions were left unanswered, even if that meant stretching the session by an hour. Going the extra mile made a lot of difference in the overall experience. The part I loved the most was having thorough discussions with the entire cohort about a single topic or problem, which made the overall experience quite fun.
The entire session was surely challenging with all the assignments. You would learn a lot of new concepts and get several rabbit holes to explore, which would catalyze the learning journey.
Brilliant sessions, Arpit The things that make this unique among other YouTube videos or tutorials are that it is more real, simpler to understand, and can conceptualise other systems while leveraging the patterns we have discussed. Great job! Thank you for the sessions and for assisting me in becoming a better engineer.
The course is very intensive, some sessions need to watch 2-3 times to get good understanding of the topic.
Arpit made the sessions beautiful with all the experience he had in building large scale systems. 1. Loved the brainstorming sessions that happened for an application and pros and cons discussion of every decision by an individual done by Arpit is really Good. 2. Some sessions are like iterative building blocks of an app from scratch is eye opener on many concepts. ex: building word dictionary. 3.Its not bounded only to curriculum mentioned but new system designs has come into picture and session went for 3hrs. Content Worth the price!!
The biggest selling point of the course is Arpit's genuine love and enthusiasm towards designing systems , I feel like I've become a better engineer.
Arpit has great working experience with distributed systems and he brings out his experience in very engaging discussions. He actively encourages collaboration during class to help us think on our feet. He is quite generous with time and often veers off the planned route for impromptu discussions.
After watching many YouTube videos and going through the available materials ,I wanted to strengthen my knowledge pertaining to system design, then came across this amazing course, which helped me to think better when it comes to scalable system and touched upon many missing points of YouTube videos, Hands down the best system design course I have encountered.
Arpit's masterclass for engineers is like cartoons for kids. You JUST CANT MISS IT ! You'll be surprised every single week by how real systems are built. The knowledge this guy has, you're missing out if you aren't picking his brains. Totally recommended.
Enrolling in this course was one of the best decisions I have taken in my life. As the name suggests this truly is a 'Masterclass'. The content is crisp, very engaging and the discussions are fun and of very high quality. The breadth and depth of topics covered would definitely help in work as well as interviews.
I had the chance to take few 1:1 mentorship sessions as well and collected some valuable wisdom from those sessions. Very few courses out there leave such an impact and this one definitely made me a better engineer.
And the cherry on top - I was able to crack SDE 2 interview at Coinbase :)
One of the best courses out there on system design, not to mention the learning alongside the amazing set of people who have been a part of the course.
The one best thing about the course is the cohort based approach which ignites discussion when different people dives into with their real world experiences and pitches in their solutions, adding more depth to every system design.
Even if someone has watched all the system design videos out there, there would be moments of amazement and would help connect the dots to various pieces of puzzles out there in production systems.
The final cheery on top is the Mentorship session which Arpit provides for any abstract discussions outside the course content as well. Its was not just about learning designing a 'xyz' system but to build an intuition, and the building blocks needed to tackle a problem statement one might come across leveraging the content and experience which Arpit provides and eventually target to be a better Software Engineer.
The course was very enriching and made me think about software design in unexpected ways. There are so many systems that we take for granted and don't look into - load balancers , cloud storages, database engines etc. even though they're often the ones doing the heavy lifting in enterprise applications.
Arpit provides great insight into why things are the way they are and also introduces some neat spinoffs! Completely worth both the time and money!
The course was like a roller coaster ride. At start Arpit will be explaining basics, and at the very next moment you'll realize he is making you answer high level concepts. Arpit is delivering his years of experience and research in this course.
At start of course, even after reading/watching so many resources , I wasn't sure of system design. By the end of this course I have already started implementing system design's lego blocks and have so many ideas which i want to implement and test myself.
Wish this cohort never ended. The enthusiasm with which Arpit teaches, his engineering adventures with large scale systems and his patience to handle even the most fundamental doubts makes this cohort special !
I appreciate not only the depth and breadth of topics covered but also Arpit's friendly teaching style and patience. The topics covered in class were non-trivial but were introduced perfectly like they were lego blocks - smaller components adding up to bigger and better systems.
What sets this masterclass apart is the focus on designing systems the way a real company would do (think companies you admire, eg FANG). This is a course that'll improve your design thinking, empower you to ask the right questions and help you make the right tradeoffs for your system. Highly recommend!
System Design Masterclass was a very immersive, interesting and a completely unique asset to learn System Design. The course structure was clear, logical and effective. Arpit is an expert Technologist and has obviously put a lot of thought and expertise into designing the course. But it wasn’t just about the knowledge. Additional benefits came from doing assignments, receiving individual feedback and interacting with Arpit and other participants.
My perspective has been changed in the way I look at Systems now. I didn’t just learn "how" to design systems – "what" and "why" also became much clearer. Investment of time, effort and money on this course is a value add to my skills and it made me a better Software Engineer!
I found this course useful as it provided me with a lot of breadth in System Design with appropriate depth. I really liked Arpit’s way of explaining complex problems in a neat and simple way. The course structure is organized in such a way that you can easily connect the dots. I highly recommend it.
One thing I can guarantee that after this course you can read any kind of system design book/blog with confidence and you will be able to relate to Arpits classes in someway or the other, also Arpit designed the course in such a way that you will be able to relate to previous classes and bring out patters in solving problems. My best investment ever :)
The kind of concepts which Arpit taught were really impressive and it helped me to understand the building blocks for different kinds of systems, making trade offs while choosing one component over the others. Arpit also encourages everyone to participate in the discussions. Arpit possesses incredible knowledge, energy and enthusiasm. He explains the concepts in simple yet effective manner.
Course is awesome! Lots of incredible stuff packed in 8 weeks. Helped me crack Principal Engineer interview at Microsoft.
A true masterclass with flavors of evolving solutions, interesting peer discussions. A great learning experience not just for interviews but for real. The openness to speak our minds out is the best part. #PaisaWasoolExperience
Had a super fun in learning how to learn and think system design. I am already using Arpit's teachings at my work, and I don't think anything more needs to be said.
It's easy to throw jargons and assume that a system can be built. But then keeping things simple and starting from the basics, the approach to be taken, taking baby steps, and then heading towards a direction is indeed best taught by Arpit. Plus, his enthusiasm!
Arpit has done a wonderful job wading through complex design issues faced for designing systems at scale. Personally, for me, I loved interacting with the members of the cohort, understanding how each one of us approached the problem at hand. And then, in the end , Arpit would explain the right trade-offs to make and finalize a solution. I loved it, highly recommend it for folks who are looking at expanding their horizons on system design.
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