Blog

29 posts on system design, distributed systems and things I find beautiful.

2026

• 14 MAY geohash vs quadtree vs r-tree - three ways to find what's near you #databases
• 12 MAY computer use agent story #design-stories
• 11 MAY noVNC and websockify #networking
• 07 MAY how dropbox handles uploads, downloads and sync #design-stories
• 03 MAY id generators - from `Date.now()` to snowflake #distributed
• 20 APR designing instagram's hashtag page #design-stories
• 20 APR designing the unread message count #design-stories
• 05 APR bit.ly system design — building a url shortener #design-stories
• 11 FEB remote locks and distributed locks #distributed
• 03 JAN Message queue #messaging

2025

• 05 DEC scaling reads #databases
• 01 OCT why databases use b+ trees to hold data #databases
• 23 SEP kv store on relational db: a storage-compute separation story #databases
• 07 SEP Caching : Thundering Herd and Request Hedging #distributed
• 07 SEP How DNS Really works and How it scales infinitely #networking
• 07 SEP Understanding Proxies: Forward vs Reverse #networking
• 07 SEP 13 Root Name Servers - The Foundation of the Internet #networking
• 07 SEP Soft Delete: Why We Never Really Delete #databases
• 07 SEP The Framework of Opposites: A System Designer's Secret Weapon #fundamentals
• 07 SEP What Happens When You Hit a URL in Your Browser #networking
• 27 JUL load balancer #networking
• 15 JUL Delegation | Task Offloading #distributed
• 15 JUL Kafka Essentials #messaging
• 27 JUN Database Locking #databases
• 25 JUN Communication - Polling, Websockets & SSE #networking
• 23 JUN Scaling | DB Proxy Pattern #databases
• 01 MAY Designing a Practical Rate Limiter #distributed
• 07 APR Bloom Filters: Space-Efficient Probabilistic Data Structures #fundamentals
• 05 APR Client-Server Architecture and Network Protocols #networking