System Design Interview Fundamentals Rylan Liu Pdf Review

| Component | Interview Core Question | Liu’s Takeaway | | :--- | :--- | :--- | | | Round Robin vs Least Load? | Layer 4 (IP) vs Layer 7 (HTTP). Use Layer 7 for microservices. | | Database (SQL vs NoSQL) | Is your data relational or just JSON blobs? | SQL for consistency (Banking). NoSQL for scale (Amazon cart). | | Cache | When to invalidate? | Write-through (slow, consistent) vs Write-behind (fast, risky). Cache-aside is the interview standard. | | CDN | Who serves static assets? | Push (you upload) vs Pull (cache auto-grabs). Use Pull for most interviews. | | Message Queue | Need async processing? | Decouples producers from consumers. Essential for peak load smoothing. |

The fundamentals are:

In the high-stakes world of FAANG and tier-1 tech interviews, the System Design round is often the "career rollercoaster." It separates the engineers who can code from the architects who can build. System Design Interview Fundamentals Rylan Liu Pdf