Back-of-Envelope Estimation
🔴 P0 — expected in every system design interview; grounds design decisions in numbers
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397 words·
2 mins
- rtshkmr's digital garden/
- References/
- Architecture Design Basics/
- Pattern Taxonomy/
- Fundamental Concepts/
Fundamental Concepts
Axioms and mental models that underpin every distributed system. These are not patterns per se but conceptual foundations that patterns build on. If you can’t articulate these clearly, pattern-level answers lack grounding.
| Pattern | Priority |
|---|---|
| Statelessness & State Management | 🔴 P0 |
| Idempotency | 🔴 P0 |
| Failure & Partial Failures | 🔴 P0 |
| Fallacies of Distributed Computing | 🟠P1 |
| Back-of-Envelope Estimation | 🔴 P0 |
Statelessness & State Management
🔴 P0 — appears in nearly every system design interview
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285 words·
2 mins
Fallacies of Distributed Computing
🟠P1 — Peter Deutsch’s eight fallacies; useful as a shortcut reference in interviews
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238 words·
2 mins
Failure & Partial Failures
🔴 P0 — the defining characteristic of distributed systems
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314 words·
2 mins
Idempotency
🔴 P0 — critical for payment systems, Stripe’s public API design is built on this
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211 words·
1 min