20 System Design Case Studies, Articles and Videos for Software Developers
Case studies, videos, and tutorials to learn System design better.
Hello guys, if you are preparing for Tech interviews but struggling on System Design interviews then you are not alone. System Design is one of the toughest topic for anyone giving Interview.
Though you can overcome this by preparing well and choosing right resources. If you are looking for resources to learn and level up your Software design skills then you have come to the right place.
Earlier I have shared System design resources like courses, books, websites, newsletters, cheat sheets, mock interviews, blogs, tips, GitHub repo, and Problems, and today I am going to share case studies and tutorials.
These are quite in-depth articles and you will learn a lot about how real world system works, how common problems are solved and how to build Software which are robust, scalable and can withstand test of time in production.
By the way, if you are preparing for System design interviews and want to learn System Design in depth then you can also checkout sites like ByteByteGo, Design Guru, Exponent, Educative, Codemia.io and Udemy which have many great System design courses
Some articles will also help you to prepare for System design interviews.
20 System Design Case Studies, Videos, and Tutorials for developers
Here are some great system design case studies shared by popular platforms like ByteByteGo, Design Guru, Exponent, Educative, Codemia.io, SystemDesign.one and AlgoMonster.
These resources will help you deepen your understanding of real-world system design concepts, problems, and solutions, making them invaluable for interview preparation or professional growth.
So, without any further ado, let’s jump into some awesome System design case studies and articles
1. Designing Uber’s Backend System
Source: Educative.io
ByteByteGo dives deep into how Uber’s backend system works, covering components like GPS tracking, real-time communication, and scalability to handle millions of rides a day.
By the way, Educative.io have many great system design interview resources like Grokking Modern System Design for Software Engineers & Managers and Grokking the API Design Interview and many others.
Btw, you would need an Educative subscription to join this course, which not only provide access to this course but more than 1200+ courses to learn essential tech skills, prepare for coding interview and improve yourself as a Developer.
If you want to invest yourself and upgrade your tech skill, this is one subscription you definitely need. They are also offering 20% discount now.
Here is the link to join — 20% OFF on Educative Unlimited
2. Designing Twitter’s Feed and Timeline
Source: Codemia.io
This case study explores the challenges of designing a scalable timeline and feed system like Twitter, focusing on load balancing, caching, and latency challenges.
By the way, Codemia.io has more tan 120+ System Design questions from interview and they also publish their high-quality editorial solution which you can study to better articulate your answer.
They are not free but they are offering 40% discount now and you can get 1 year of Codemia.io subscription for just $59 (U.P. $99).
Here is the link to join — 40% OFF on Codemia.io
3. Designing Facebook’s Messenger System
Source: DesignGurus.io
This is a video case study where DesignGuru Arslan Ahmad explains how to design Facebook Messenger and how Facebook handles millions of messages per second using distributed databases, message queues, and real-time synchronization.
By the way, DesignGurus.io also have many other Grokking courses to prepare for essential coding interview topics like OOP Design, System Design, Dynamic Programming etc and you can get access to all of their courses for a big discount by joining their All course bundle. You can also use code GURU to get 30% discount.
4. Designing YouTube’s Video Streaming Service
Source: ByteByteGo
ByteByteGo offers a detailed breakdown of how YouTube manages video uploads, storage, and distribution, focusing on latency, bandwidth, and CDN architecture.
The lessons you will learn can be used to not just design YouTube but also any other Video Streaming Service like Netflix, Amazon Prime Video or HBO.
If you don’t know, ByteByteGo is another great place to learn System Design and prepare for tech interview. Founded by Alex Xu, author of one of the most popular book, System Design Interview — An insider’s guide, this website is full of lessons on System design, problem solving and software architecture.
Here is the link to join — ByteByteGo (Use code JALJAD to get 10% discount)
5. Designing Dropbox: File Storage System
Source: tryExponent
This case study covers the design of a file storage system like Dropbox, focusing on client synchronization, file chunking, metadata storage, and maintaining consistency.
This is also in form of a Mock interview so you will get to learn a lot more than what you do in a normal tutorial or case study.
They also have a great System Design Interview Course with more than 36 lessons and videos with real interview examples. And, if you don’t know Exponent is actually known for their Mock interviews and many FAANG And MAANG aspirants take their Mock interviews to prepare well and you can do that to.
Here is the link to join Exponent — tryExponent.com
6. Designing Amazon’s Recommendation System
Source: YouTube and Data Science Dojo
Learn how Amazon’s recommendation engine works by processing vast amounts of data to suggest products based on user behavior, collaborative filtering, and real-time data streams.
This video is freely available on YouTube
7. Designing Instagram’s Backend Infrastructure
Source: DesignGuru
A deep dive into Instagram’s system architecture, covering how the app manages photo uploads, feeds, and scalable content delivery to millions of users globally.
They also have a great full length video which is worth watching
8. 8 Reasons Why WhatsApp Was Able to Support 50 Billion Messages a Day With Only 32 Engineers
This post outlines the incredible story of WhatsApp co-founder Jan Koum. And the engineering techniques used to scale WhatsApp. You should definitely read this post by Neo Kim
You can read it here
9. Heartbeats: How Distributed Systems Stay Alive by Ashish Pratap Singh
Heartbeats are one of the oldest way to check if things are ok or not but how does they work, you will find in this article
10. 10 System Design Topics You Must Prepare for Tech Interviews
This another great article where you will learn about key system design topics for interviews like
1. Caching
2. Sharding
3. load-balancing
4. replication
5. fault-tolerance
6. high-avaibility
7. Performance
8. scalability
9. Performance
10. Indexing
11. How PayPal Was Able to Support a Billion Transactions per Day With Only 8 Virtual Machines
This post outlines how PayPal scaled to a billion daily transactions with only 8 virtual machines.
12. What is Kafka? Architecture Deep Dive
This is my latest article, in case you haven’t read, A deep dive into Apache Kafka architecture and inner working
13. Creating Software Diagrams using Mermaid Charts
In this video, we have shared another AI powered tool Mermaid Charts to create software diagrams. Mermaid Charts combines the power of ChatGPT and Mermaid.js for turbo charging your diagraming capability.
14. A Brief History of Scaling Netflix
Source: ByteByteGo
Netflix’s video streaming architecture focuses on optimizing content delivery through CDNs, encoding, and handling massive amounts of traffic to ensure a smooth user experience.
You can read the full case study here
And, if you want to leanr more you can also watch this video on YouTube. This video showed how Netflix API architecture evolved starting from Monolith to Direct Access to Gateway Aggregation Layer and now Federated Gateway.
15. Designing a Scalable Chat Application
Source: ByteByteGo
This case study walks through the architecture of a chat application, including message storage, load balancing, and achieving low-latency real-time messaging.
16. How Google searches one document among Billions of documents quickly?
Source: YouTube
Learn the system architecture behind Google Search, including indexing, ranking algorithms, and query optimization to handle billions of daily queries efficiently.
17. Design A Location Based Service (Yelp, Google Places)
Source: ByteByteGo
In this System Design case study , you will learn about how to design a proximity service.
What is a proximity service? This is a service that is commonly found as a back-end component in an app like Yelp to find the best restaurants nearby, or, in a mapping app to find the closest gas stations.
You can watch the full video here
18. Designing an Event Ticketing System like Ticketmaster
Source: Codemia.io
Understand the architecture of an event ticketing system, covering features like user authentication, seat reservation, payment processing, and handling high traffic during sales.
This is asked normally on Product Design interview as well as on System Design interview.
Here is also a nice video from YouTube which can help you understand this design even better:
19. How Disney Hotstar Captures One Billion Emojis!
Source: ByteByteGo
This is an interesting System Design case study where you will learn Today, how Disney Hotstar aced the extraordinary challenge of managing 5 billion emoji reactions during a high-tension Cricket World Cup match.
This video is based on engineering blog post, so if you want to read, you can read it here
And, if you want to watch, you can watch the full video here.
20. Designing TinyURL
Source — Educative.io
URL shortening is a service that produces short aliases for long URLs, commonly referred to as short links. Upon clicking, these short links direct to the original URLs. The following illustration depicts how the process works:
That’s all guys, 20 System Design case studies, articles and videos is I guess enough for a weak. You an read these articles to learn about System design and how real world software works, scales and server miliions and billions of events and users.
I will share more if you like it let me know in comments.
All the best
Other System Design Articles and Resources you may like
- Is DesignGuru’s System Design Course worth it
- 16 best Resources to Prepare for System Design Interview
- Is Exponent’s System Design Course worth it?
- 16 Best System Design Interview Resources for Developers
- Is System Design Interview RoadMap by DesignGuru worth it?
- 10 Reasons to Learn System Design in 2024
- 6 Best System Design and API Design Interactive Courses
- Top 5 System Design YouTube Channels for Engineers
- 10 Best Places to Learn System Design in 2024
- How to Prepare for System Design Interview in 2024
- Is ByteByteGo really worth the hype?
- How to Design Twitter on System Design interview?
- 10 Software Design Courses for Developers
- 5 Best System Design Newsletters for Interviews
- 100+ System Design Interview Questions and Problems
- My Favorite Software Design Courses for 2024
- 3 Places to Practice System Design Mock interviews
- Is Designing Data intensive application book worth reading?
Thanks for reading this article so far. If you like this Twitter system design interview solution then please share with your friends and colleagues. If you have any questions feel free to ask in comments.
P. S. — By the way, DesignGuru.io also have many other Grokking courses to prepare for essential coding interview topics like OOP Design, System Design, Dynamic Programming etc and you can get access to all of their courses for a big discount by joining their All course bundle. You can also use code GURU to get 30% discount.
