· Topic
System Design
Patterns, tradeoffs and real architectures for high-throughput, low-latency systems.
Roadmap
stage 1
Foundations
stage 2
Core patterns
stage 3
Advanced
stage 4
In production
Articles
- intermediate 28m
MS Stack Ch 21 — Testing strategy
Unit, integration, end-to-end, contract, mutation, load — the testing pyramid for ASP.NET Core + React on Azure. xUnit, WebApplicationFactory, Vitest, Playwright, k6, Stryker, Pact.
- intermediate 30m
MS Stack Ch 20 — Security baseline
OWASP Top 10, secrets management, transport security, auth hardening, supply-chain integrity, input validation, output encoding, security headers. The non-negotiable security checklist for every web app.
- intermediate 30m
MS Stack Ch 19 — IaC and rollout orchestration
Bicep modules, what-if previews, environments, region rollouts. Awareness of Ev2 (Microsoft internal), Spinnaker, ArgoCD. The pattern for safely deploying infrastructure + apps across regions.
- intermediate 30m
MS Stack Ch 18 — CI/CD with Azure DevOps
YAML pipelines, templates + parameters + extends, agent pools, federated identity for Azure deploys, SDL gates (CodeQL, credential scanner, container scanning), multi-stage deploys, environments + approvals.
- intermediate 28m
MS Stack Ch 17 — Caching
IMemoryCache, IDistributedCache, HybridCache (.NET 9), Redis, cache-aside, write-through, stampede protection, invalidation, TTL strategies. The discipline that makes 10× perf gains routine.
- intermediate 32m
MS Stack Ch 16 — Resilience patterns with Polly v8
Retry with jittered backoff, timeout, circuit breaker, bulkhead, fallback, rate-limiter, hedging — composed into a single resilience pipeline. The patterns that keep your app alive when downstream services don't.
- intermediate 32m
MS Stack Ch 15 — Observability
Serilog structured logging, Application Insights, OpenTelemetry, correlation IDs, distributed tracing, KQL queries for telemetry, alerts, dashboards. Knowing what your app is doing in production.
- intermediate 36m
MS Stack Ch 14 — Identity for cloud apps
Entra ID, OAuth 2.0 + OIDC, Easy Auth (App Service Authentication), Managed Identity, On-Behalf-Of flow, certificate-based authentication. The identity stack that lets you stop storing passwords or secrets.
- intermediate 32m
MS Stack Ch 13 — Azure App Service
App Service plans, deployment slots + swap + warmup, app settings, Key Vault references, VNet integration, scale-out rules, custom domains + TLS. The Microsoft PaaS that hosts most of the stack.
- intermediate 26m
MS Stack Ch 11 — Data visualisation with Highcharts
Highcharts options model, series types, axes, performance for high-cardinality data, theming, accessibility, exporting. The chart library that powers most enterprise dashboards.
- intermediate 30m
MS Stack Ch 10 — Routing and state in SPAs
React Router (nested + lazy), URL as state with useSearchParams, server state vs UI state, TanStack Query, Zustand vs Redux Toolkit. Choose your state strategy deliberately.
- intermediate 42m
MS Stack Ch 9 — React
Components, JSX, the rendering model, hooks (useState, useEffect, useMemo, useCallback, useRef, useReducer, useContext), custom hooks, error boundaries, Suspense, wrapping imperative libraries. React without the cargo cult.
- beginner 28m
MS Stack Ch 8 — Frontend build tooling
Vite, HMR, Rollup, esbuild, npm vs pnpm, tree-shaking, env vars, dev proxy. Understanding what your bundler is actually doing so when it breaks, you know where to look.
- intermediate 30m
MS Stack Ch 7 — TypeScript
Structural typing, narrowing, generics, discriminated unions, utility types, tsconfig. TypeScript without the over-engineering.
- beginner 35m
MS Stack Ch 6 — Modern frontend baseline
Semantic HTML, ARIA + a11y, the CSS cascade + box model + Flexbox + Grid, modern JavaScript (ES2024), fetch, the event loop. The browser-side foundations every React app stands on.
- intermediate 42m
MS Stack Ch 5 — ASP.NET Core
Minimal hosting, dependency injection, middleware, routing, configuration, options, model binding, ProblemDetails, BackgroundService, health checks. The web framework you'll spend the next decade in.
- intermediate 32m
MS Stack Ch 4 — .NET runtime and async
The CLR, garbage collector, Task vs ValueTask, the async state machine, cancellation, the dotnet CLI, NuGet, global.json, central package management — the runtime your C# code actually lives in.
- intermediate 38m
MS Stack Ch 3 — C# language
C# 12 + .NET 8: the type system, LINQ, generics, async/await, pattern matching, records, nullable reference types. The language you'll write 1000s of lines of in production.
- beginner 35m
MS Stack Ch 2 — Web fundamentals
HTTP, headers, cookies, TLS, REST, CORS, JSON — the wire-level protocol every backend and frontend bug eventually reduces to. Buy yourself fluency in the protocol and stop guessing.
- beginner 28m
MS Stack Ch 1 — Developer tooling
PowerShell, Git's three trees, VS Code, browser DevTools, and the package managers that run your day. The boring tools that determine whether you'll feel fluent or fighting for the next two years.
- intermediate 18m
From Novice to Fluent on the Modern Microsoft Web Stack — 22-Chapter Self-Study Plan
An opinionated 22-chapter self-study plan from zero to fluent on the modern Microsoft web stack: PowerShell + .NET + ASP.NET Core + React + TypeScript + Azure + KQL + Polly + Bicep — with hand-built HTML diagrams per chapter.
- intermediate 12m
Designing a Search Engine — Crawl, Index, Query, Ranking
Session 44 of the 48-session learning series.
- intermediate 12m
Designing a Distributed Job Queue — Reliability, Backoff, Idempotency
Session 39 of the 48-session learning series.
- intermediate 12m
News Feed / Timeline System — Fanout-on-Read vs Write, Ranking
Session 35 of the 48-session learning series.
- intermediate 12m
API Design — REST, GraphQL, gRPC, Versioning, Pagination, Errors
Session 31 of the 48-session learning series.
- intermediate 12m
Caching Strategies — CDN, Application Cache, Cache-Aside, Read-Through
Session 26 of the 48-session learning series.
- intermediate 12m
Designing a Chat System — Connections, Fanout, Storage, Delivery
Session 22 of the 48-session learning series.
- intermediate 12m
Sharding & Replication — Partition Keys, Hot Spots, Multi-Region
Session 18 of the 48-session learning series.
- intermediate 12m
CAP, PACELC, Quorums — How Distributed Systems Actually Trade Off
Session 12 of the 48-session learning series.
- intermediate 12m
URL Shortener Part 2 — Cache, CDN, Hot Keys, Abuse
Session 8 of the 48-session learning series.
- intermediate 12m
URL Shortener Part 1 — Numbers, IDs, Storage
Session 3 of the 48-session learning series.