High-Level Architecture for Beginners
While deep system design is traditionally expected for mid-to-senior roles, top companies now routinely test fresh graduates on their architectural intuition: what happens when your app grows from 10 users to 100,000 users?
1. Horizontal vs Vertical Scaling
Vertical scaling (adding CPU/RAM) has physical and budgetary limits. Modern cloud systems rely on horizontal scaling (adding stateless server nodes behind a reverse proxy or load balancer).
2. Caching Strategies with Redis
Avoid hitting your primary database for frequently accessed, read-heavy data. Learn Cache-Aside, Write-Through, and TTL expiration mechanisms.
3. Database Indexing & Sharding
Understand how B-Tree indexes accelerate queries, the trade-off with write speed, and when horizontal data partitioning (sharding) becomes necessary.
