Mar 9 · 14 min read · TLDR: Capacity estimation is the skill of back-of-the-envelope math that tells you whether your system design will survive its traffic before you write a line of code. Four numbers do most of the work: DAU, QPS, Storage/day, and Bandwidth/day. 📖 T...
Join discussionAug 1, 2025 · 2 min read · Imagine you’re a salesperson for a boutique car manufacturer and you’re having a sales conversation with a new, important customer: Customer: Thanks for seeing me. I’m really looking forward to one of your custom cars!Salesperson: Absolutely. You can...
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Jul 15, 2025 · 14 min read · The conference room was cold, as they always are. Across the table sat a candidate, let's call her Sarah. Sharp, articulate, and flew through the coding rounds. Now, we were in the system design session. I sketched a simple box on the whiteboard. "Le...
Join discussionJun 30, 2025 · 18 min read · The Art of Estimation: Navigating Scale in System Design Interviews Hook Introduction Imagine you're designing the next generation of Uber's ride-hailing system. The interviewer leans forward and asks, "How many servers do you need to handle 100 mill...
Join discussionFeb 2, 2025 · 6 min read · Step 1: Understand the nature of Software Estimates Steve “ardalis” Smith's article outlining the Laws of Software Estimates is one of the best available. To summarize: Estimates are Waste: The more time and effort you waste on estimating, the more...
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Jan 29, 2025 · 3 min read · Greetings from ProCoders! Estimating time for software development can feel like predicting the weather—everyone has an idea, but few get it exactly right! In today’s newsletter, we’ll explore proven methods and techniques to help you accurately esti...
Join discussionDec 16, 2024 · 7 min read · Everyone knows the four hardest problems in software engineering are cache invalidation off-by-one errors meeting deadlines naming things This post is about the 2nd problem: meeting deadlines. Why it's hard I'm actually not going to get into al...
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Oct 31, 2024 · 14 min read · Introduction Fermi Estimation is a fascinating method used to make quick, rough estimates of quantities that are difficult to measure directly. Named after the renowned physicist Enrico Fermi, this technique involves making educated guesses by breaki...
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Aug 20, 2024 · 8 min read · The HyperLogLog algorithm is a clever way to count how many unique items are in a big dataset without using a lot of memory. Imagine trying to count every different item in a huge list, like all the different words in a book. Doing it the regular way...
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Aug 11, 2024 · 11 min read · When asked to describe the qualities that define a great software developer, traits like effective communication, curiosity, teamwork, a positive attitude, creative problem-solving, and quick learning often come to mind. However, one crucial yet freq...
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