Game Leaderboard System Low-Level Design
5 min read Requirements Update a player score in real time Query the global top-100 leaderboard Query a player’s exact rank among all […] Read article
5 min read Requirements Update a player score in real time Query the global top-100 leaderboard Query a player’s exact rank among all […] Read article
6 min read Why Distributed Locks? In a distributed system, multiple servers run the same code concurrently. A distributed lock ensures only one Read article
6 min read Requirements Users can browse events, select seats from a seat map, reserve seats, and complete payment Prevent double-booking: no two Read article
6 min read GCD and LCM Euclidean algorithm: gcd(a,b) = gcd(b, a%b), base case gcd(a,0) = a. Time O(log min(a,b)). LCM: lcm(a,b) = Read article
6 min read Requirements One-on-one messaging and group chats (up to 500 members) Real-time message delivery (< 100ms), offline message storage, read receipts Read article
6 min read What a CDN Does A Content Delivery Network caches content at edge Points of Presence (PoPs) geographically close to users, Read article
5 min read Core Idea Build a prefix array where prefix[i] = arr[0] + arr[1] + … + arr[i-1]. Then any range sum Read article
6 min read Upload Pipeline Raw video upload β object storage (S3 raw bucket) β message published to transcoding queue (SQS/Kafka) β transcoding Read article
6 min read Requirements Design a file storage system like Google Drive or Dropbox supporting: Upload and download files up to 50 GB Read article
6 min read Core Services A ride-sharing platform like Uber or Lyft decomposes into focused microservices: Location Service: ingests driver GPS pings, maintains Read article
7 min read Two Graph Models The first design decision is the relationship model: Directed graph (Twitter/Instagram follow): A follows B does not Read article
7 min read Design patterns appear in coding interviews in two ways: the interviewer asks you to implement a specific pattern, or you’re Read article
6 min read Typeahead search (also called autocomplete) is one of the most latency-sensitive features in a modern product. Users expect suggestions to Read article
6 min read An e-commerce platform touches nearly every backend concept that appears in system design interviews: relational data modeling, inventory consistency, distributed Read article
8 min read A proximity service answers “find all restaurants / drivers / users within R km of this location” with low latency Read article