System Design & Architecture

Deep dives into architectural patterns, scalability strategies, and distributed system concepts that power modern backend infrastructure.

13 posts in System Design & Architecture

System Design & Architecture|9 min read

Stateless vs Stateful Services: Why Everyone Says "Go Stateless"

Your app works perfectly on one server. Add a second behind a load balancer and users start getting logged out at random. "Make it stateless" is the standard advice, but the state doesn't disappear; it moves. Here's what stateless really means, what sticky sessions cost you, and when keeping state in the process is the right call.

statelessstatefulhorizontal scalingsticky sessions

Oct 20, 2026Read

System Design & Architecture|10 min read

Consistency vs Availability: The CAP Theorem in Practice

CAP gets taught as "pick two of three," which is both wrong and useless. The real theorem says something much narrower and much more actionable: when the network splits, you either refuse the request or you serve possibly-wrong data. Here's what that choice looks like in real systems.

CAP theoremdistributed systemsconsistencyavailability

Aug 24, 2026Read

System Design & Architecture|10 min read

Message Queues vs Event Streams: Kafka Isn't Always the Answer

Both put a buffer between your services, so they get treated as interchangeable. They aren't. A queue hands each message to one worker and forgets it. A stream keeps an ordered log that many consumers read at their own pace. Choosing wrong means fighting your infrastructure for years.

message queuesevent streamingKafkaRabbitMQ

Jul 29, 2026Read

Performance & Scalability|10 min read

The Thundering Herd Problem: When Your Cache Expires

Your cache has a 99% hit rate and the database is idle. Then one popular key expires, ten thousand requests miss simultaneously, and every one of them tries to rebuild it. The cache didn't fail — it worked perfectly right up until the moment it didn't.

thundering herdcache stampedecachingperformance

Jul 18, 2026Read

System Design & Architecture|7 min read

Load Balancing Strategies: Round Robin Is Just the Beginning

Round robin spreads requests evenly — right up until it hands the next request to a server that's already drowning. Even distribution of requests isn't the same as even distribution of load. Here's how the real algorithms decide where traffic goes, and when each one is the right call.

load balancingsystem designscalabilityreverse proxy

Jul 5, 2026Read

System Design & Architecture|7 min read

The Fallacies of Distributed Systems: What Will Go Wrong

Your code works flawlessly on your laptop, then falls apart the moment it talks to another machine over a network. That's not bad luck — it's a set of assumptions every developer makes and the network quietly breaks. Here are the eight fallacies and how to design around them.

distributed systemssystem designnetworkingresilience

Jun 15, 2026Read

System Design & Architecture|9 min read

The Saga Pattern: Distributed Transactions Without Distributed Transactions

A single business action spans three services and there's no ACID transaction to save you. The saga pattern trades atomicity for a chain of local transactions and compensations. Here's how it works, when to reach for it, and the guarantees you quietly give up.

saga patterndistributed transactionsmicroservicessystem design

May 23, 2026Read

System Design & Architecture|10 min read

CQRS Explained: Why Read and Write Models Should Divorce

CRUD works until your reads and writes have fundamentally different needs. CQRS separates them into independent models -- giving each side the freedom to optimize without compromise. Here's when that separation pays off and when it's overkill.

cqrscommand-query-responsibility-segregationcqrs-vs-crudevent-sourcing

May 7, 2026Read

System Design|17 min read

Event-Driven Architecture: When Messages Solve Your Problems

Your services are tangled in synchronous calls, and one slow endpoint brings everything down. Event-driven architecture decouples your system with asynchronous messaging -- here's how it works, when it helps, and when it makes things worse.

event-driven architecturepub/submessage queuesmicroservices

Apr 7, 2026Read

System Design|12 min read

Rate Limiting Strategies: Protecting Your API from Yourself

Rate limiting isn't just about stopping bad actors. It's about protecting your infrastructure from traffic spikes, runaway clients, and your own frontend making too many calls. Here's how the four main algorithms actually work -- and when to use each one.

rate limitingAPI designsystem designscalability

Feb 21, 2026Read

Performance & Scalability|10 min read

Caching Strategies: Cache Aside, Write Through, Write Behind

Your cache isn't just a faster database. Different caching strategies make fundamentally different trade-offs between consistency, latency, and complexity. Here's how to pick the right one.

cachingperformancesystem designscalability

Feb 16, 2026Read

System Design|10 min read

The Circuit Breaker Pattern: Failing Fast to Stay Alive

When a dependency goes down, the worst thing your service can do is keep calling it. The circuit breaker pattern stops cascading failures before they take down your entire system.

circuit breakerresiliencesystem designmicroservices

Feb 16, 2026Read

System Design|7 min read

REST vs GraphQL vs gRPC — Choosing the Right API Paradigm

A clear breakdown of when to use REST, GraphQL, or gRPC. Not opinions — control flow, trade-offs, and decision logic that actually helps you pick the right one for your system.

API designRESTGraphQLgRPC

Feb 8, 2026Read

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