As a mid level engineer, inching towards senior level, I always wondered about the process that sets one apart from the rest, in terms of technical expertise. To be brutally honest, we all know that in IT where majority of the work we perform on a daily basis, can be performed by any mid level engineer. Then, how do you create that difference in knowledge as you add more years to your experience?

This COHORT has showed me the path forward to create that difference. We deep dived about 30 systems in 8 weeks and it’s not these 30, but the comprehensive approach, minute implementation details and its application to seemingly very different systems, that created all the difference. And these sessions are not monologues, rather proper brainstorming session where we literally covered low level design decisions (storage/schema, communication protocols, concurrency controls, type of locking, etc) to micro optimisations (batching, connection pooling, indexing, etc) to high level architectures. Also, the focus is always towards designing for real systems which are cost efficient (one of the most important requirement for any company) and not some jazz which look complex.

Prototyping these systems (which Arpit will encourage you for, every hour of this cohort), will actually make you realise that it’s not that hard as we think. Personally, it also helped me understand the resources one needs to consume at different levels of experience/knowledge and THIS sets me on a path where I can keep growing my technical horizon. I literally had a time of my life attending this cohort. And I highly recommend this to anybody who is inclined towards understanding and designing complex distributed systems.

ProTip: Participate in brainstorming sessions. Prototype systems you are building. Utilise 1:1 sessions.

This is one of the best courses out there on system design. Arpit covers a wide range of system design topics and concepts in a very interactive manner. All these concepts are in turn also explained through design discussions on real time use cases.

It is not a usual course where someone is speaking and you are just listening, I loved the format of the course where you get to dive deep into all the concepts through interactive discussions. This course is highly recommended to working professionals who want an extra edge in growing their career as engineers/architects, it would definitely improve your approach on designing and implementing software solutions. Like Arpit said in his very first session - “approach is more important than the solution”. So if you want to become “Asli Engineer” this course is a must :).

I would recommend the dedicated course is worth the investment. To deepen my understanding of HLD I opted for the course. I still remember my first call with Arpit, I have never met such a curious engineer in my complete career and was damn impressed when I saw his GitHub.

Arpit helped me in thinking of a bigger picture on an engineering scale. Core concepts with amazing discussion in a very lucid way. It literally has everything that I wanted to learn. The best thing about the course is that he digs deeper into those topics which we hardly find anywhere and the push he gives to each one of us in session motivates us to think beyond. I do miss Saturday and Sunday discussions with you :(

Thank you Arpit for the Amazing sessions. I have become a great fan of you due to your simplicity, depth of design knowledge, and teaching skills.

Arpit’s System Design Masterclass is the best one in the class. I come from a Monolith architecture background and learned many things in this class on the Micro-services ecosystem side. I have observed the following cool things here:

1. Our session always started at 8:50 AM, that was a 10 minutes early from the scheduled time. Arpit discusses the feedback, questions, suggestions that were given by anyone from the previous class.

2. When you are in a session you get a feeling that you are working in team, in a same project. That thing makes you very comfortable and help you to uplift fast.

3. There is a QnA session that starts at 11:30 and lasts as long as you have anything to discuss.

4. Arpit always has a logical answer to a questions that you ask him.

5. Arpit mostly focuses on the Best Practices of doing something.

6. He always recommend you to build a “Hello World” of anything which you are learning.

7. He is always available for you whether it’s in class, an email, Discord or LinkedIn conversations.

8. Arpit’s energy level is very high. I always get a feeling that he is working 24x7 to uplift his knowledge and then spread it among others. He always keep smiling and encourage us to go extra miles to achieve something amazing in the technology world.

9. He reads many technical papers from Google Scholar and try to implement shared recommendations. He talks about all those experience in his class as well.

10. No doubt, He is an “Asli Engineer” who has worked on a very large scale projects, got a practical exposure of everything.

He helps you in the most important aspect, that is “How to think about any problem and then how to take steps for the right solution.”

At the end, I will say(Just in case if you are still confused from his course) “Dikhawe pe mat jao, apni akkal lagao(An old tagline from Sprite ad)”. Just explore following things and you will get the answer:

• Arpit’s LinkedIn profile
• His Youtube channel
• His website

That’s all from my side. All the very best, Arpit. Whatever you are doing, we are proud of you. And we are very happy from joining your masterclass. Thank you.

Bande mein hai dum!! 🙏🙂

#Asli Engineering!! Definitely lived up to the hashtag!! When I came across this course, I really liked the syllabus and the way it focused on real life systems. Most of the material related to system design I found online was quite theoretical and left me wondering whether I would ever need it. However this course was different. It wasn’t a one way traffic. To me, it was almost like a fast-forward version of how that particular system must have been designed when it came into existence and what must have been the thought process of the engineers who built it. It was more of a discussion with Arpit doing the handholding if someone misses something and sharing terrific insights about real life systems. Not just the design discussions, but regular question-answering sessions also provided different perspectives about why that particular system should be designed in that fashion and also how things actually work in different companies. There were so many new platforms and systems that I hadn’t even heard of before I took this course.

Arpit has structured this course in a very optimal way, so that you always have something to take away from a session. Every week’s sessions left me wondering. How does this guy manage all this ?? and that too with such passion and energy!!

I highly recommend taking this course, especially for those who are at the start of their careers like me as you would also get to learn a lot from the senior folks as well who take this course. Also the learning curve would be extremely high.

PS: This course was the most productive thing I did in the last 7-8 weeks. My main take away from the course was most the systems that are extremely successful are quite simple and intuitive. It’s just that we as engineers should know how to approach a problem and ask the right questions. Arpit’s course focuses on that a lot!!

Being in the industry for six years, I had mostly worked in the data domain and had only surface knowledge of the system design components - especially from the application side. Though I am a reader and have read many blogs on system design, application designing and internals but never grasped the concepts so clearly until I joined this masterclass!

I was so grateful to be part of Arpit’s cohort and learned from him in many ways than one, his attention to details while designing systems, focusing on real systems and examples, scalability and also making sure all questions are answered before closing for the day.

Summarizing, I would say, it is a MUST DO COURSE FOR EVERY ENGINEER!!

Thanks Arpit for sharing your knowledge and inspiring so many people :)

I got to know about Arpit and his course in late 2021 though one of my friend who already took his course but I signed up for May 2022 cohort, now after completing this course I wish I could have signed up early but its “Better late than never”.

To support my above statement, my opinion about this course:

1. It boosts your curiosity, which is very much needed if you are working in IT. For me it has not just added to my curiosity but multiplied.

2. You become very much aware and see things very differently which you have already read from your school, college time and using it daily. (*Mindset shift)

3. The course structure is very well designed from Fundamentals to designing highly scalable systems.

4. The brainstorming session throughout the course which is very much needed.

I would highly recommend this course to all the engineers out there if you really wanna ignite the #AsliEngineer in you. (Discord community, Cracking interviews, …, etc all are the bonus). Worth investing.

Thanks a ton Arpit for putting your great efforts to this course. :)

The lectures by Arpit, are explained thoroughly and reinforced through practical usecases. It’s best suited for developers that already know SQL and have some industry experience - Junior/Mid-level Backend engineers looking to move to Senior levels or experienced engineers looking to refresh knowledge. The lectures helped me to understand the DB internals. In-depth discussion of LSM-trees and how one can use the adhoc components built on LSM-trees & other databases is just mind blowing. Lectures are a guide on “How to optimize the application as well as DB performance in conjunction”. Emphasis on core concepts by Arpit will make entire system design like a game of ‘LEGO Building block’.

This course will make you love engineering again if you’re put-off by boring 9 to 5 job. I would describe the whole vibe of the course as a discussion with experienced engineer rather than a traditional structured academic course. The course is worth every penny you will ever invested.

“Your enthusiasm is contagious” - a fellow student said to Arpit on our last day of the cohort, and I couldn’t agree more.

• It goes beyond what’s just needed for interviews and tries to address difficult design choice questions

• The classes are well organised: They aren’t just a unidirectional flow of information. The students get to participate in brainstorming the problem statement, building them from scratch, and Arpit ensures to nudge us just enough to keep us on track, and more often than not, the students themselves only are able to come up with quite similar approach as Arpit later discusses. This is a really good quality of a teacher: not giving away the answer, but at the same time, making the students capable enough to arrive at the answers by themselves.

• No class ends with a student having some doubt: At the end of each class, there is an open discussion, where all doubts related to the topics discussed are clarified, and then only the class is concluded.

• What makes Arpit stand out from other instructors out there is that most of the content discussed in the classes, Arpit had first hand experience building similar systems in production. So, he is teaching from his practical experience.

• Recently, he announced system design video library: All the best discussions for each problem statement would be updated here and all the new problem statements covered in the future batches will also be made available to all the students who had enrolled in any cohort. Life-long learning, what else can one ask for

• One major learning was: We always think too ahead and complicate things. Repeatedly throughout the course, just how starting simple and iterating over it with common sense leads to good robust designs instills a lot of confidence in students, making them realise designing system is no rocket science, its just taking one step at a time, and being aware of the already available solutions out there and building on top of them.

• And finally, like I mentioned in the beginning, apart from just the content of the course, there’s a lot more to it: I’ll highly recommend another fellow engineer just to be part of the discussions: the enthusiasm with which Arpit discusses in all the classes is something to witness. It takes you back to the point of thinking why all of us got started with software engineering in the first place: to get the sheer joy of building things. Down the line, its very normal to lose motivation or not feel as enthusiastic as we were when we were fresh out of college. Its really one of an experience to witness Arpit’s enthusiasm in all these classes, how he has sustained it for so long over these years, and if you look closer, it’ll tell you the BTS of making of a great engineer, what sets a great engineer apart from others: because of their ability to find pleasure and being hungry for more always.

Arpit’s cohort is the answer for everyone who want to genuinely learn(or grow their knowledge of) how to design highly scalable & resilient systems, not just how to crack system design interviews.

Arpits’s approach of problem solving, starting from the ground up, asking “WHY” for every design choice, big or small. Arpit makes you think of that one remote performance improvement scenario and it’s this attention to detail, that makes Arpit’s cohort truly unique and informative.

Couple the above with the cohort’s diverse thought processes and experiences, and you get yourself a fabulous learning environment. I cannot remember one session post which I didn’t have any new takeaways/learnings.

The cohort has been the best part about my weekends, and I definitely recommend it to everyone!

What you get - Amazing Mentor, Great discussions/Brainstorming sessions & #AsliEngineering concepts!

I will start from the beginning. I have been following Arpit on LinkedIn, reading his blogs and YouTube videos, etc., since quite some time. What really struck out to me was the fact in every video he was covering topics that were not usually covered by people who were targetting for interviews. Just take a look at his CPython tutorials on YouTube and you will undestand what I mean. You could see genuine interest for engineering and breaking things apart to understand how they work only to put it back together and build it again from the scratch. This is what really caught my interest. You don’t see that interest usually in other engineering or CS related blogs. This course was no different.

Right from the beginning he made it pretty clear this is not some course you would use for your interview prep but rather expand upon your software engineering understanding. Even before day 1, he shared topics and reading material saying that you should come prepared after reading these topics in order to understand whats going to be discussed in the classes. The best part that I liked about his classes were, that he approached every system design problem with a Day 0 approach and then build upon the scaling part. I mean, it was not like “Hey, this is the most optimal solution with some jargon thrown around”, but rather, “This is our problem, lets build the most basic solution possible, and then try to scale it up and understand concepts while we do that.”. His energy is downright contagious when he is explaining difficult topics. I have seen him answer the most basic questions and go to extreme lengths to explain rather difficult topics in a very basic manner. My favourite lecture by far was Distributed ID Generators. Such a simple concept, such a simple design and he just nails every concept in the head. You would genuinely be amazed at his ability to spark that curiosity inside of you to search for the solution yourself.

Additionally, he takes effort to make the class as engaging as possible. It’s not like, he will go on blabbering for 2-3 hours continuously and take questions or queries in the end. No, he makes sure that people are engaged, he keeps asking questions about the solution, poking holes and making us question the design ourselves. You must have heard about some Physics/Chemistry/Maths teachers who make the class so interesting and genuinely develop curiosity for those subjects in the students mind. Arpit, does exactly that for system design. He genuinely has a passion for teaching.

I really enjoyed my time in this course. There are lot of things that I have to learn from my end to fully grasp the concepts and implement the concepts that I learned, and thanks to Arpit, I know where to look for them now :D

To summarize, 12/10 would highly recommend this course :D.

TLDR - Arpit’s enthusiasm!

However, if you want my detailed testimonial it is below.

Top to bottom approach based learning - Instead of learning what cache is, what load balancer is. He picks a problem, designs a solution that is acceptable for Day 0, then introduces failures using scale/reliability/… and introduces these components to solve the failures.

Arpit neither spoon feeds you nor gives you just an overview of things. He explains concepts that are theoretical (for example: log based file system) and pushes you to experiment few things to learn yourself (for example: reservation systems using different kinds of locks). Arpit wants you to feel the same magic he felt when implementing these systems.

Every problem feels like a typical interview question and answer, but he has some gotchas or wow moments which make you realize this is so cool (from his past experience). And best part is he tries to push everyone in this direction and make them answer instead of giving the answer away.

Arpit also explains the philosophical side of engineering, why you shouldn’t over engineer things on Day 0, how technology inspires from real-world (he explained how flash sale happens offline and how it mimics the similar behavior) and makes it fun throughout.

Though Arpit does 90% of the things, you still need to do 10% which will help you in long run, 1. Read the pre-reads that he shares every week. 2. Ask questions - Arpit loves answering them even if it is dumb. Also, one question doesn’t have one correct answer. Express your thoughts about the problem/solution, Arpit will listen, learn and improvise it for next cohort. He added at least 2 new cool stuff based on learning from the past cohorts. 3. Take note of keywords or new concepts and explore them later. 40 hours is never enough for Arpit to teach you everything. 4. Try to implement whatever is possible. 5. Schedule 1:1 with him anytime to discuss more.

Loved this course. Arpit brings his vast experience in designing systems to cover some of the most important system design problems. What I found unique about this course was instead of this being a monologue, Arpit encourages brainstorming as part of the course o guide the thought process of how to go about designing these systems. He also placed emphasis on designing simple systems that work as compared to overly complicated systems. The course is well structured in the sense that, Aprit uses concepts discussed in a previous class in topics for a future class, thereby letting people relate the concepts.

Overall the course is very well designed and well delivered and I would highly recommend anyone interested in learning systems design to take this course.

It was an amazing course. Got to learn a lot of new things and the minor details that are generally ignored in all the contents available on the web. I also loved the learning approach which involved discussions and brainstorming which makes a person to think about the problem in depth about all the edge cases. Personally my favourite part was the one on one call with Arpit which helped me make better decision about my career and I feel that’s a huge add on to the course which not many people mention.

The Way Arpit Designed the course is truly amazing. The course has completely changed the way I used to think before while approaching a problem statement. It has made me realize that simplicity is the key to highly scalable systems.

I wish these sessions continued for some more time. Will definitely miss the discussions. But the course has already showed us how to become an #AsliEngineer. Looking forward to more knowledge materials from Arpit from other sources (Youtube, Papershelf, Blogs).

I joined the cohort to expand and validate my knowledge on system design. Initially I started participating in the cohort and got diverse perspective about the same problem from others. But later I just started listening the cohort, it immensely helped me unlearn, learn and re-learn the topics in depth.

Arpit is highly enthusiastic when it comes to delivering a topic and the best part is you get to hear different ways to approach the same problem. The best part about Arpit was he never jumped into a solution, which helped us push towards thinking different directions, now when I look at any topic or read any blog I have different ways I can approach about not just limited to one system or component. The presentation that Arpit made during the cohort were very well researched and above the bar.

Before attending this cohort I used to think system design is pretty much just putting boxes with appropriate non-function requirements but after attending the cohort I can see/approach systems in a different perspective. I think this was one of the best investment I have made so far.

Highly recommend this cohort!! – Sarthak

I loved this course. Before starting I was just a beginner at system design but now I feel like I can design any system.

This course is very engaging. There is a lot of active learning. I would think of a solution and discuss it, to soon realise why it is bad (or good). Over the course of this masterclass I have been able to develop an intuitive understanding of not only how to design scalable systems but also why some systems don’t scale, when the system is getting complicated and how to simplify it. Overall the course builds up really well from the simple concepts to more complex ones.

Something really good about this course is that Arpit keeps systems grounded in reality and focuses on implementation as well. So I never felt as if we were building hypothetical systems. In fact I could see myself implementing them.

This course has increased my interest in computer science many-folds. It has made me a better engineer.

While the content is top-notch, something which many of my fellow participants talked about, I shall discuss some other invaluable takeaways from Arpit and the System Design masterclass:

1. Communication - It’s a bidirectional communication. It’s not Arpit simply giving a out a lecture, it is us the participants chiming with our approaches with Arpit orchestrating the discussion, probing us and questioning us on even the smallest of our design decisions. After this he collates all the points to converge on the approach. After a few sessions, I was accustomed to asking myself - “why I am choosing this database or this communication mechanism over the other, and, can this be done better or more cost-efficiently”?

2. Intuition - Probably the MOST IMPORANT TAKEAWAY from the masterclass - We do not merely learn how to construct popular systems and use-cases like scaling Instagram notifications, designing Dropbox multi-client sync or designing S3. We learn the way we should approach each use-case considering the storage, network and cost, to name a few. In other words, his teaching helps us build the intuition to tackle the diversity of use cases in system design.

3. Lego style architecture - Arpit rarely builds a entire system in one go. Rather he dissects them in components and teaches them one at a time, constructing it from the ground up. I was surprised to find that how the components we built in previous weeks could be conveniently plugged in and used as black boxes into complex systems we designed in the later weeks.

4. Structure - Each session has a discipline - problem statements, followed by discussion and them formal coverage by Arpit. No nuisance or surprise which helps us focus solely on the content and make the best out of the discussion. To add to this Arpil laid out the requirements clearly which made the focus razor sharp E.g. If we are designing Dropbox, today we shall focus on resumable sync, not the entire Dropbox. The communication between client and server could use the Kafka pipeline we built in a previous week.

5. Pragmatism: Real systems are simple, scalable and cost-efficient - one of the most important takeaways from the masterclass. Theoritically, we can assign huge number of redis clusters or Dynamo DB nodes, but coming to real life scenarios - we could be left bankrupt real soon as these resources don’t come cheap. Arpit helps us ponder over these important nuances and guides us how to build optimizations over these.

6. Start small, add complexity with time and metrics - Another key takeway. Start with the day 1 architecture and add shards/nodes/clusters/load balancers and what not - depending on how the scale grows - is something I learnt from the sessions.

7. Break it down to the root - Each system we covered, we designed it from the ground up - taking into mind the storage, communication and cost - to name a few. Nothing was taken from granted - I was very amused when we actually discussed how to build a load balancer or design S3 - things i never cared to ponder on.

8. Diversity of Participants - The June cohort had participants having experience ranging from 2 years to 11 years (approximately), each bringing forth their knowledge and expertise into the discussions.

9. Continuous feedback - Arpit made available a Google form which could be filled anonymously after sessions, if one had concerns about anything regarding the delivery or content of the session. Arpit read it out and made sure to address this concerns in the upcoming sessions.

10. Professional growth - Something that took me off guard. Many-a-times, Arpit gave up tips on what design decisions would not optimize and add value to the system we were creating, but could also help differentiate us from our fellow engineers and assist us in climbing the corporate ladder.

Finally, Arpit’s love and passion for architecturing systems and appreciating engineering excellence is contagious, to say the least.

Sign up to experience #AsliEngineering at it’s truest sense!