Systems & Architecture · 300-level
Systems & Software Architecture
A principal-architect deep dive into designing systems that scale, stay consistent, survive failure, and keep evolving — from quality attributes and tradeoff thinking to distributed systems, resilience, and architectural decision-making.
ARC-3013 creditselectiveno prerequisites
What's inside
Sections & lessons
01
Architecture fundamentals
- Quality attributes are the real requirementsconcept40 min
- Every architecture decision is a priced tradeoffconcept40 min
- What the architect actually doesconcept35 min
- Coupling and cohesion decide your blast radiusconcept40 min
02
Scalability patterns
- Statelessness and sizing a fleet with Little's Lawconcept40 min
- Load balancing and the limits of adding serversconcept40 min
- Caching tiers, hit rates, and the stampede problemconcept45 min
- Read replicas, sharding, and CQRSconcept40 min
03
Data-intensive systems
- Replication topologies and their failure modesconcept40 min
- Partitioning, rebalancing, and secondary indexesconcept40 min
- Consistency models from linearizable to eventualconcept40 min
- Transactions across service boundariesconcept40 min
04
Distributed systems
- CAP, PACELC, and what you actually give upconcept40 min
- Consensus with Raft: election, replication, and quorumdemo45 min
- Time, clocks, and ordering in distributed systemsconcept40 min
- Idempotency and the exactly-once mythconcept40 min
05
Event-driven & microservices
- Drawing service boundaries with domain-driven designconcept42 min
- Choreography versus orchestrationconcept40 min
- Sagas and compensating transactionsconcept42 min
- The distributed monolith trapconcept40 min
06
API & integration design
- Contract-first API designconcept42 min
- Versioning and backward compatibilityconcept42 min
- Gateways, BFF, and sync versus async integrationconcept41 min
07
Resilience & failure
- Designing for failure modesconcept40 min
- Timeouts, retries, and backoffconcept42 min
- Circuit breakers, bulkheads, and load sheddingconcept42 min
- Graceful degradation and blast radiusconcept41 min
08
Architecture decision-making
- Architecture decision recordsconcept40 min
- Fitness functions and evolutionary architectureconcept40 min
- Avoiding big design up front: reversibility and the last responsible momentreflection40 min
This module ends in a gate you can fail.
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