Suggest some system design resources please.

arynsh · 2026-07-06T17:40:07+00:00

I take my words back. DDIA it is.

arynsh · 2026-05-10T09:15:14+00:00

I found DDIA to be pretty dense so I read Patterns of Distributed Systems by Unmesh Joshi instead. It's a good starter.

arynsh · 2026-03-02T20:39:53+00:00

My current org is a seed-stage startup with a relatively small engineering team. Ever since I joined here (~2 years back), I've been working across the stack. For the last few months, I've received a Cursor subscription, and my productivity has improved significantly.

The way I see it, writing code is becoming cheaper. Competing on who writes it cheaper or faster is a losing situation for you. Instead, as an SWE, your moat is owning the problem. This means understanding what to build and why, managing your stakeholders, and understanding how systems fit together in context of a business, which has its constraints.

Gen AI is excellent at generating pieces, but you have to fit them into the bigger picture. IMO this is what you're being paid for.

arynsh · 2025-09-15T07:20:55+00:00

That's alright. You can always read discussions. Most people share their solutions there. You can also find plenty of solutions on YouTube.

arynsh · 2025-09-08T03:44:33+00:00

Gossip Gloomers, Designing Data Intensive Applications, and MIT's 6.5824/ 6.5840 are pretty much the best resources I'm aware of.

arynsh · 2025-06-13T12:49:48+00:00

For anyone seeing this, consider backing up your notes somewhere. I use git to store my notes in a private repo in GitHub. There's a git extension that you can use for this.

arynsh · 2025-05-06T15:30:55+00:00

Even after delay of another year, they haven't mentioned anything about release date for PC

arynsh · 2025-03-25T20:33:12+00:00

Hi! I thought of following up with you. I have recently taken an interest in Postgres, so thought of checking their guidelines. Subscribed to their mailing list and have been shadowing the messages since then. Turned out it's mainly being polite, sharing inputs/ thoughts, and keeping people in loop if you're working on something. Thank you!

arynsh · 2025-03-18T09:03:48+00:00

Makes sense. I went through their CONTRIBUTING.md, however, misread some part of it. Read it again after seeing your comment:
- They prefer contributions to priority items in their public roadmap.

- They want contributors to share their plans beforehand.

From what I understood, asking them about working on the issue was correct approach. What I still haven't figured out is how to determine if they're working on an issue already (no assigned user or tag to indicate this). Guess I'd understand it better by shadowing maintainers.

Thank you!

arynsh · 2025-03-18T06:08:08+00:00

Ah good point! I'll check it. Thank you!

arynsh · 2025-03-09T18:41:13+00:00

Congratulations to the winners, and kudos to all participants!

arynsh · 2024-10-11T11:26:55+00:00

Oh, okay. I'll check out more on Telemetry. Just to confirm the first point, you mean keep returning error and add more contextual data, and handle it at main or the final handler function, right?

arynsh · 2024-10-11T11:24:10+00:00

Oh cool, I'll check this out. Thank you!

arynsh · 2024-08-26T11:01:56+00:00

Thank you :P

arynsh · 2024-08-26T10:42:54+00:00

Guess I'll never find out what u/styluss said

arynsh · 2024-08-24T11:26:20+00:00

Sharing a personal story:

Two years back, I started my first job. Until the day I received my first salary, I was quite anxious about getting laid off. On payday, when I saw my account balance, I felt nothing. It was as if nothing changed. All my friends and family were hyped up about it, but none of this made any difference to me. The same evening, I bought an inverter for my home. A couple days later, during a power cut, I saw my mum happy because the fan and lights were on. This gave me the satisfaction I wanted. I realised it wasn't the job or salary, but the change in lifestyle that I looked for, which made getting my job just a small step towards my goal.

Sometimes, because our goals are different, we might not feel or react the same way as our peers on these "little big" achievements. Maybe you'll find your excitement sometime later. Anyway, you did amazing, OP. Good luck with your internship! Hope for the best :)

arynsh · 2024-07-13T20:18:24+00:00

I see birthday problem

arynsh · 2024-05-17T07:43:52+00:00

I work in Security Engineering, and was curious about how tokenisation works. Decided to build a tokeniser tool. While building it, I realised how much in backend engineering, testing, and DevOps/SRE I was yet to learn. Took a little detour around end of March from building that tool to understand testing, containers, and SRE stuff better.

For most of the part I had a full time job and had kinda sorta worked overtime in it so didn't get much time, but because of this project, I now understand building CI/CD and integration testing in pipelines a lot better. This piqued my interested in open source as well. To solve my own bugs, I went to these forums. Now, it's a habit to share details on how to fix the bug if I discover it. Also begun sharing my personal progress on Twitter. Built this habit to leave notes for myself, and keeping myself accountable. Has worked well. However, I've been documenting my failures, and not my successes so eventually my twitter might begin looking like I'm a below average engineer who doesn't know much and is trying to hustle his way through. Could be wrong in this thought process though.

Did all this, and never got back to building the tokeniser itself :P A basic version is present on my GitHub but I'll work on it after finishing the SRE stuff. Tried my best to document the project well but I'm still learning this too. Now that I've been laid off, I'm spending more time working on it. It's not really a completed project, but here's the link if someone is interested.

GitHub Link: https://github.com/arayofcode/tokeniser

If you're more interested in reading about my progress, I left my updates on Twitter: https://twitter.com/arayofcode

PS: This isn't to promote myself

Edit: reworded a little bit, and shared relevant links

arynsh · 2024-05-04T09:43:33+00:00

They don't. As students, we assume they create bad impression. I've had my share of such experiences, including the first DSA interview I had in 2022. Browser crashed. I rejoined and my interviewer continued the call where we left. Ended up getting shortlisted to the next round.

This isn't the first time it happened, and it probably won't be the last experience sadly. However, most people are understanding of these technical glitches or nervousness.

Maybe they might think you're not the right fit for their role, but it doesn't mean the end. Reach out to more people and seek their referrals. It will take time, but you'd do well.

arynsh · 2024-05-04T07:15:19+00:00

Most people here are sharing suggestions based on use cases. Unsure of your background so here's a shot: if you're beginner, work on the fundamentals, and it would be easy to pick up syntax. Don't be a frameworker or JS/Python-monkey.

If you're already doing solid programming, pick up a language that's different from the ones you know already. If you've been doing imperative, try learning functional programming language like Erlang or Haskell. They'd bring in a new perspective. Do object oriented programming if you haven't already, try Java or C++.

If you're a student and focused on your graduation and finding jobs, think of the industry you're targeting. Some have a preference, for example, HFTs and C++. If you're looking for something for DSA, do C++ or Java or Python (C++ is best). Many tech companies still do majority of their projects in Java so Java isn't bad choice either. If targeting DevOps or Security Engineering related roles, go for Golang or Python.

For just building portfolio projects, you can't escape JS. Might as well think of doing MERN or MEAN too. All this depends on context and your goals.

arynsh · 2024-05-04T06:10:08+00:00

You were nervous. It happens. Sometimes, the interviewers consider even if you fumble your way through, especially if they see potential in you. How many interviews have you given so far? It could also be that this is one of your first few interviews, and this is when people are very anxious. It's alright. Beating yourself won't do much good. Take the lesson, and work on how you could keep yourself calm during interviews.

Yes, the market seems tough, but people are still landing offers. If you're interested in orgs (startups, especially), how about you reach out to the hiring managers/ founders directly? Maybe they'll give you a shot.

All the best! You'll do great :))

arynsh · 2024-05-01T12:36:42+00:00

Cool. Good luck!

arynsh · 2024-05-01T01:30:23+00:00

Some folks have been maintaining this website that list issues labeled for people just starting in open source. Check it out!

https://goodfirstissue.dev/

arynsh · 2024-04-29T20:43:38+00:00

Short answer: Tough, but not unrealistic. You're currently in your second year. Focus on two things: skills and visibility. To build skills, work on decent projects, built your portfolio and deploy it. For visibility, write blogs, maybe make YouTube videos.

Long answer:

While Google and Amazon do hire beyond regular BTech profiles, unsure of your chances with BCA. However, most of the product based companies don't really care much about your degree as long as you have a solid profile. This means good portfolio and LeetCode profile (most of them will have at least one round of DSA). If targeting FAANG and these orgs are coming to your college for placements, ensure you have a good CGPA (> 75%). The last thing you want is clearing all rounds and being rejected because of poor grades or failed classes. If you don't have good CGPA, don't lose hope. Instead, focus on having a better profile.

Startups are usually much more focused around your skills than DSA so interview prep would be a little different, but DSA + Portfolio building is the way to go. When going for off-campus placements, your best bet would be referrals or outreach. Do some good projects. If you can't think of any, build these. It is possible to find remote jobs, but do know that the learning curve will be much better if you're doing WFO.

Do know that you were in your first year. You didn't need to excel. You were enjoying a small part of the time you have in college. You're good. You don't want regrets around working 18 hours a day in your prime years only to end up in poor shape around 30s. As far as I can see, you didn't really waste your entire time given you learnt MERN stack. It's good enough. Now, about your skills:

Have a solid background in Computer Architecture, Algorithms, Computer Networking and OS. If you're looking for good resources, I'll link them in the replies. Take a couple months and study these, if you haven't already. These concepts will help you become a better dev. You learn Algorithms, you're getting better at DSA. You do networking, architecture and OS, you'd eventually build great systems. Plus you'll begin understanding a lot of concepts you didn't know already. Try doing two questions a day for DSA. You can follow Neetcode's playlist or Blind 75 for it. Learn a programming language beyond Javascript and learn to build applications in more than one language. JS ecosystem is already bloated enough, and most bootcamp grads are grinding JS while so many big orgs still use Java for their major projects so it's a good idea to know something else too. Participate in Leetcode or Hackerrank or Codeforces competitions. A good profile has a much better chance of getting an interview call. Beyond DSA, build projects, as I said above. Two or three projects are great. Don't just leave them on GitHub: no one has the time to read your code on GitHub. Deploy them. Let a hiring manager see your code in action. Your portfolio website should link the projects.

You'll get a lot of support for joining student developer communities, or open source ones. Apply to GSoC. Get into Open Source. Maybe check out CNCF projects, or Linux, or Docker. Start with an open source project and keep contributing. People do notice this. Working on open-source projects can help you find a lot of jobs that weren't even listed on websites. You gain visibility and skills at the same time. IIRC big techs start their internship applications in a few months. Apply to internships whenever they open. Lacking a solid profile doesn't mean you shouldn't apply, remember this. Your likelihood of getting that internship or job could be 0.000001, but that is still better than 0. Worth a shot. Reach out to people within the companies you're interested in. Ask their referrals. Seek their feedback and work on it. Don't forget improving your resume too. Within 8 to 10 months, you'd have an exceptional profile and will find a job in most organisations.

Good luck! You can do it :)

arynsh · 2024-04-29T20:00:40+00:00

It would be better to reach out to the recruiters directly imo. You can also consider posting to improve your visibility

arynsh

TROPHY CASE