
Ask HN: What are some ways to learn system design/architecture for a recent grad? - ra7
I am a recent grad and I want to learn more about how to design big systems. I read engineering blogs by companies often, although most times I have trouble getting the big picture (the most recent one being understanding how Docker fits into the big picture). I guess it starts with getting to know the architecture of the product I work on, but the product is rather a small one with a simple design.<p>How should I go about understanding system design and eventually designing big systems? I&#x27;d love to hear some of your suggestions. Thanks in advance!
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brudgers
The [http://se-radio.net](http://se-radio.net) podcast series has discussed
many architectural and design topics. The
[http://changelog.com](http://changelog.com) podcasts frequently discuss
problems at that scale because their pain motivates open source solutions.
Finally, there may be no better software design talks than Rich Hickey talking
about designing Clojure.

Good luck.

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NY_hudson
I like looking at old stuff from Bell Labs and Xerox Parc. If you dig around,
you can find some tremendous papers about designing systems. For example,
search around for books and papers in the 70's and 80's on Unix, the Alto,
Ethernet, etc...and when you find an author you like, check the reference and
find more like that. Checking the articles listed in a wikipedia article's
reference is also a good starting point for this sort of thing. For example
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethernet](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethernet)

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twunde
One good resource is [http://highscalability.com](http://highscalability.com).
It's got a number of good stories about scaling up and the architectures
decisions used therein. There are also a number of articles and papers
released by Google, Linkedin and Amazon that are worth reading.

One thing that I've found incredibly useful is diagramming application
architectures, starting with applications you work on. That plus understanding
the CAP theorem

