Review — Is ByteByteGo a Good Place to Learn System Design?
My review of Alex Xu’s ByteByteGo and his System Design Interview — An Insider’s Guide book for learning Software design in depth.
Hello guys, if you are preparing for System Design Interview then you may have come across names like ByteByteGo and System Design Interview — An insider’s guide, one of the best resources for System Design Interview by Alex Xu.
And, if you don’t know and just looking for best places to learn System Design then you have come to the right place. In the past, I have shared best System Design courses, System design questions, System Design Cheat Sheets, and Books where I have mentioned about ByteByteGo and System Design Interview — an Insider’s guide.
And in this article, I will provide my detailed review and opinion on ByteByteGo and his popular System Design Interview — An Insider’s guide book.
Though, if you have already made your mind and just need a second opinion, I suggest you to go for it. The value ByteByteGo course provides is much more than the price you pay. It’s one of the most comprehensive, up-tp-date, and easy-to-learn System design course I have come across.
I highly recommend it to every Programmer and Software Engineer, irrespective of whether you are preparing for System Design Interview or not. It will help you to become a better developer in quick time.
I first come across Alex xu and ByteByteGo when one of his tweet on how does HTTPS works? popped me on my timeline, I really liked the way he explained the concept and his clear diagram like the one shown below:
After that I started to find more about ByteByteGo and Alex and found that he is also an author of the popular System Design book, called System Design Interview — An insider’s guide Part 1 and Part 2 and since I have always been interested on System design and Software Architecture I started reading them.
The more I read them, the more I become fan of Alex Xu and his work and then I found that he also has an online course on System Design on ByteByteGo or Byte Byte Go, whatever you called.
His course is actually a digital version of his book, it covers all the material provided in System Design Interview — An insider’s guide Part 1 and Part 2 but also more stuff as he keeps adding new stuff on this website.
What is ByteByteGo? How does it help you to learn System Design in depth?
ByteByteGo is a text-based System Design course that contains lots of detailed illustrations to guide you through how to build complex systems step by step in a way that’s easy to understand.
As Alex xu put, ByteByteGo or Byte Byte Go is the digital version of his popular System Design Interview — An insider’s guide book. It not only cover all the materials in part 1 and part 2 but also additional material which Alex added only to online version.
It’s similar to Educative’s Grokking Modern System Design For Software Engineers and Managers
Course which is also text-based but it’s actually a well thought-out course and covers a lot more concept. The first 3 of the 13 chapters are dedicated to Location Based Services(LBS).
Since many of us use Location based apps like OLA, Uber, Grab, Navigation Google Maps, etc, it makes it easy to understand how they are implement and work.
ByteByteGo also covers things like Proximity Services that deals with static locations like Yelp and Nearby Friends service which deals with dynamic locations because people move. And their deep dive into Google Maps is another useful information which is really a massive Geospatial platform.
What I most like about both book and course is that they discuss various Geospatial indexes (Google S2, Quadtree, Geo Hash, etc), including their tradeoffs, this is something I haven’t found covered in other popular System design courses.
But, this is not all they cover many other popular systems like Payment Systems, Distributed Email Service, Real-time Gaming Leaderboard which will surely broaden your knowledge.
Is ByteByteGo and System Design Interview worth for Beginners and Experienced Developers?
Even though the book was designed with System Design Interview in mind, it revisits and explains key computer science concepts with twist of engineering that not only useful system design interviews but also for every programmer and Software engineer who want to become better at their job.
Both System Design book and ByteByteGo website will help you to better understand why some design decisions are made over others which makes it ideal for beginners and experienced folks who wants to brush up system design concepts before interview.
One worth mentioning thing about ByteByteGo and his System design book is Case studies. I personally like to read cases studies which are diverse, engaging, and in-depth and Byte Byte Go fits that bill.
I imagine it was quite a feat to cover quite a wide range of subjects in practical-details, while at the same time keeping it crispy and easy to digest, in a 400-ish page book or an online course.
What I like most about ByteByteGo System Design training course is that every single design decision consider the scale of system like small, medium or large In addition all algorithms come with a practical time/space complexity analysis, in some cases it goes really deep into the data structure used and how such Data Structure fit into a production ready environment, which is what many people like me liked to see.
You will learn to analyze like tradeoffs of packing a quad-tree geo-hashed regions into 1GB memory and how it impact of server startup time), otherwise point in the right direction for those willing to deepen their understanding on the just discussed concepts in depth.
All these things makes ByteByteGo and System Design Interview — An insider’s guide a must read book for every programmer. All the things you learn is nothing for the price you pay for book and course, its immensely valuable.
Which System Design Problems are solved in this course?
IF you are wondering which System design problems are solved in this book or course and which products are designed and explained then here is a list of them:
1. How to design YouTube?
2. How to design Ads Aggregation
3 .How to design Stock Exchange
4. How to design Newsfeed
5. How to design Gaming Leaderboard
6. How to design Mail Server
7. How to design Hotel Reservation System
8. How to design a URL Shortner like bit.ly
9. How to design Web Crawler
10.How to design Notification System?
11. How to design Payment System?
12. How to design Digital Wallet?
13. How to design Search Autocomplete and so on
14. How to design a BlockingQueue?
Apart from that they explain many key System Design concepts and algorithms like consistent hashing, distributed caching, Rate Limiter, Unique ID Generator, as well as framework for System Design Interview.
Many of these resources are completely free in ByteByteGo platform and you can read them to get a feel of content.
What is the cost of ByteByteGo Membership?
Alex has been kind enough to put price parity in his Byte Byte Go course, this means the course will cost you less if you are coming from India than US, which makes it really affordable to all kind of technical people coming from all sorts of countries with different purchasing power.
Here is the cost of ByteByte membership in major countries and currencies:
- cost of ByteByteGo in United states (US) — 84.00 per year
- cost of ByteByteGo in India — INR 3500 per year
- cost of ByteByteGo in Canada — CAD 84.00 per year
- cost of ByteByteGo in Singapore — SGD 82.97 per year
And here is what you will get for that price:
- Everything in the books
- Regular new content releases
- 400+ diagrams
- Exclusive discord community
- Mock interview buddies
The price and value proposition of this course lean towards value because the value it provides for the price is immense, There are not many places online where you can learn about System design in so much depth and so easily then ByteByteGo and that’s why I highly recommend ByteByteGo membership to every programmer.
If you have a friend you can even gift ByteByteGo membership to him and he will never forget that.
Is ByteByteGo worth it for System Design Interview Prepration?
In my honest opinion, ByteByteGo is definitely worth it for anyone who wants to learn System Design. If I have to pick what I like most is their diagram, those are really really good but depth of the knowledge Alex Xu share is also impressive.
On top of that the language which makes those technical concept easy to understand. By considering all factors like price, value, diagrams, explanation and content quality, I am 100% convinced that both ByteByteGo and Alex’s System Design Interview — An insider’s guide books is worth it. This is actually the best money spent on learning System design.
I have gone through many great System Design Interview resources like Educative’s Grokking Modern System Design for Software Engineers & Manager, Udemy’s System Design course, DesignGuru’s Grokking System Dseign course, as well as Exponent’s System Design Course and found that ByteByteGo is the most comprehensive, up-to-date, as well as most interesting of all of them.
To be honest, this is one of the resource which you won’t find easily. Most of the knowledge you learn by working on big scalable system like Amazon, Spotify Google etc but you learn all of them by just joining this course.
All these makes it one of the best investment you will make in learning because system design concepts are essential for designing scalable system which can withstand test of time in production.
Should You Join ByteByteGo or System Design Interview — An insider’s guide Book by Alex Xu?
If you are confused between book and course and just want to join one thing then I suggest go for the ByteByteGo course. Since, its easier to update the course website rather than publishing a new version of book, it make more sense to join the ByteByteGo then reading System Design Interview — An insider’s guide by Alex Xu.
You will always get more updated material via course then book, but if you are someone who enjoys reading books then by all means go for System Design Interview book, its one of the best book I have read on System Design and I highly recommend it.
Even if you are not preparing for technical interview, reading and learning about System design will help you immensely technical and you will be a better developer and software architect after learning those essential System design concepts like distributed architecture, two phase commit, caching, reliability, Microservices, communication etc.
The best thing about the course is that you will not only get all the content which are taught in book but also 400+ diagrams, Exclusive discord community and Mock interview buddies which will help you cracking your System Design Interview.
Thanks to both Alex Xu and Sahn Lam for creating these wonderful books and ByteByteGo online course platform.
Here is the link to join ByteByteGo Platform — Join ByteByteGo for 10% discount
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Thanks for reading this article so far. If you like my review of ByteByteGo system design course website and System Design Interview — An insider guide book then please share with your friends.
It’s one of the best resource you can get online to learn about System Design in depth and I highly recommend it to all level of programmers. Beginners can learn concept they don’t know and Experienced programmers can brush up things they already know and get a fresh perspective of how a large and scalable system works.
P. S. — If you just want to do one thing at this moment, go join ByteByteGo and start learning System Design concepts, you will thank me later. Make it a goal for new year and you will surely be a better Software Engineer.
