A while back I started diving into system design.

I got curious about how large-scale modern systems work, how and why their architecture is shaped the way it is. Decided to step outside the mobile dev bubble (wrote about that in my previous post).

I love learning and consume a ton of educational content now: books, conference talks, articles, all mixed together. But what really clicks for me is smart people who explain complex things simply.

So here are 3 lectures I want to recommend: Oleg Bunin's talks from HighLoad++ 2017 (1, 2, 3) as a solid foundation for system design. He walks through different approaches to scaling high-load systems one by one, then gradually moves into practice. Sure, some things are dated by now, but the fundamentals hold up.

I know that at least some of my friends who are really cool engineers are reading this. If you know similar resources that explain system design in a clear way, please share, I'd really appreciate it 🙏

Fun fact: back then (in 2017) VK had only about 20 developers 🫡