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Educative Review – Is Grokking Modern System Design for Software Engineers and Managers worth it?

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Hello guys, System Design Interview is one of the hardest part of any coding or programming job interview and it requires a lot of preparation and knowledge to crack system design interview. You need to know a lot of System design concepts like API Gateway, Load Balancer, Microservices vs Monolithic architecture, SQL vs NoSQL, Horizontal vs Vertical scalability and much. If you are preparing for System design interview then you may have come across that Educative.io has one of best System design courses like this one and Grokking the System Design Interview. Before I give you my verdict on whether you need to choose Educative’s Grokking Modern System Design For Software Engineers And Managers course, let me tell you a little bit about what system design really is.
System design is basically the process of defining elements of a system including modules, architecture, components, interface, and data for a system based on a specific set of requirements. It can also refer to the process of defining, developing, and designing systems. These designs have to satisfy the specific needs of a company or an organization.

In today’s complex software engineering world, the ability to design scalable, reliable, and efficient systems is paramount.

With the surge in demand for complex systems capable of handling massive user loads, engineers and managers alike are faced with the challenge of mastering modern system design principles, and that’s where this course helps.

It’s not just for System design interview preparation but also to understand existing Software architecture and create new architecture which can handle test of time. This course covers lot of essential concepts which I think quite important for any developer and technical manager a like.

In this comprehensive review, we delve deep into the essence of the course, assessing its efficacy in equipping software engineers and managers with the requisite knowledge and skills to tackle real-world system design challenges.

Review Of Educative’s Grokking Modern System Design For Software Engineers and Managers? Is it worth it?

As a system designer, you have to make use of all the different modeling languages for expressing the information and knowledge in the structure of a system. This system has to be defined by a consistent set of rules and definitions. It can also be defined in textual or graphical modeling languages.

There are different kinds of graphical modeling languages like the Unified Modeling Language, UML, Flowchart, Business Process Modeling Notation, and Systems Modeling Language.

There are also different types of design methods that you can make use of. They include Architectural Design, Logical Design, and Physical Design.

Coming to the crux of the matter, the Grokking Modern System Design For Software Engineers And Managers is one of my favorite system design courses on the internet right now. It is basically a course that has been literally created to prepare you for a system design interview.

Through this course, you will also get an idea of how to approach system design in general.

Here is the full list of topics covered in this course:

1. Introduction (2 Lessons)

2. System Design Interviews (4 Lessons)

3. Abstractions (4 Lessons)

4. Non-functional System Characteristics (6 Lessons)

5. Back-of-the-envelope Calculations (2 Lessons)

6. Building Blocks (1 Lesson)

7. Domain Name System (2 Lessons)

8. Load Balancers (3 Lessons)

9. Databases (5 Lessons)

10. Key-value Store (5 Lessons)

11. Content Delivery Network (CDN) (7 Lessons)

12. Sequencer (3 Lessons)

13. Distributed Monitoring (3 Lessons)

14. Monitor Server-side Errors (3 Lessons)

15. Monitor Client-side Errors (2 Lessons)

16. Distributed Cache (6 Lessons)

17. Distributed Messaging Queue (7 Lessons)

18. Pub-sub (3 Lessons)

19. Rate Limiter (5 Lessons)

20. Blob Store (6 Lessons)

21. Distributed Search (6 Lessons)

22. Distributed Logging (3 Lessons)

23. Distributed Task Scheduler (5 Lessons)

24. Sharded Counters (4 Lessons)

25. Concluding the Building Blocks Discussion (4 Lessons)

26. Design YouTube (6 Lessons)

27. Design Quora (5 Lessons)

28. Design Google Maps (6 Lessons)

29. Design a Proximity Service / Yelp (5 Lessons)

30. Design Uber (7 Lessons)

31. Design Twitter (6 Lessons)

32. Design Newsfeed System (4 Lessons)

33. Design Instagram (5 Lessons)

34. Design a URL Shortening Service / TinyURL (6 Lessons)

35. Design a Web Crawler (5 Lessons)

36. Design WhatsApp (6 Lessons)

37. Design Typeahead Suggestion (7 Lessons)

38. Design a Collaborative Document Editing Service / Google Docs (5 Lessons)

39. Spectacular Failures (4 Lessons)

You can see that its quite comprehensive and it not only provide solutions to popular System design problems but also explains many key software architectural components like API Gateway, Sequencer, and Load Balancer.

It is also one of the only courses out there that will teach you about large-scale distributed system design problems in detail. It does not matter even if you are an expert in the field. I am pretty sure that you will find this course a valuable learning experience.

The smart people who have created this course have also gone the extra mile to give you a list of design choices. This list will make you understand the requirement, compare different approaches, and finally come up with a suitable solution for the complex problem that you are facing.

What makes this course really interesting is also the fact that the instructors do not spoon-feed you anything. You are required to work on the problem and come up with innovative solutions yourself. If you are looking for just one course that will thoroughly prepare you for a system design interview, you do not need to look any further.

The instructors of the course will also share with you their first-hand experiences on how to solve a complex system design problem. You will learn about all the different tips, tricks, concepts, and approaches for solving system design questions in general.

You will also have the opportunity to practice a lot of classic system design problems like the web crawler, URL shortener, and designing a restaurant reservation system.

The course will teach you about different techniques that are useful for scaling distributed systems. You will get an overview of database technologies and NoSQL solutions. In addition, you will also learn how to use caching for improving scalability and performance.

So, yes, Grokking the Modern System Design for Software Engineers and Managers course on Educative is definitely worth it for its comprehensive and well-structured curriculum.

It not only teaches you essential system design concepts like API Gateway vs Load Balancer, Database Sharding, Replication, horizontal vs vertical scaling but also provide step by step framework and solution for common System design problems like how to design YouTube, Parking Lot, Library System, URL Shortener and much more.

This knowledge and practice will certainly help you to do well on System design interviews. The course is also very affordable with just $14 per month on a 2 year plan.

Other Best System Design Interview Courses

Now that we have seen the review of Exudatives’ most popular and flagship course “Grokking the Modern System Design for Software Engineers and Technical Managers“, its time to look at Eduative’s other popular and worth taking online courses related to System design and Software Architecture.

1. Grokking The System Design Interview [DesignGuru]

This System design course on DesignGuru is a comprehensive course that focuses on preparing for system design interviews, which are commonly conducted in technical interviews for software engineering roles.

The course covers various aspects of system design, including scalability, reliability, availability, performance, and more. It provides in-depth explanations, real-world examples, and practical tips for designing large-scale distributed systems.

The course also includes interactive exercises and practice problems that help learners apply the learned concepts in a hands-on manner. The content is well-organized, and the course provides a structured approach to understanding system design principles and best practices.

Course Duration: 3 hours

Course Rating: 4.6 stars out of 5

Course Instructor: Educative

Course Price: $20 per month

This is a wonderful course that will teach you everything you need to know about system designing along with grokking from absolute scratch. In this way, it is absolutely perfect for complete beginners. It is a perfect starting guide for beginners looking to enter the amazing world of system design.

This was also my first course which I joined on Educative and few years back only great resource to prepare for System Design interviews but now its available on DesigGuru.io, another popular platform for preparing System design and coding interviews.

Overall, “Grokking The System Design Interview” is a valuable resource for anyone preparing for system design interviews, providing the knowledge and skills needed to excel in these types of interviews.

This is the second part of the previous System Design course and its now also moved to DesignGuru.io from Educative.io Created by Arslan Ahmed and his team of FAANG engineers, in this fantastic course, you will learn about all the core features of advanced system design.

Course Duration: 2 hours

Course Rating: 4.6 stars

Course Instructor: Design Gurus

Course Price: $20 per month

This course not just provide more advanced System Design problems but also give new tips and tricks to analyze a requirement and come up with best possible design. You will also become a very advanced system designer.

You will be able to master both system design and grokking. By the end of this course, you will become an expert system designer.

This is a great course that will help you take your skills in object-oriented system design to another level. You will be able to do this by using object-oriented system design rather than the traditional system design techniques

Course Duration: 2 hours

Course Rating: 4.4 stars out of 5

Course Instructor: DesignGuru

Course Price: $20 per month

The course will teach you how to pass your system design interview. You will also learn how to get jobs at Google. Facebook, Microsoft, and Amazon.

And, if you like these Grokking interview courses from DesignGurus.io, you can get all of them for a big discount by purchasing their All course bundle. This bundle include their most popular Grokking courses like Grokking System Design Interview, OOP Design, Coding Patterns, as well Grokking Dynamic programming interview. You can also use code GURU to get 30% discount.

This is an exciting course that will teach you everything you need to know about the basics of machine learning system design in the shortest time possible. The course will also teach you everything you need to know about machine learning and system design.

Course Duration: 1 hour

Course Rating: 4.6 stars out of 5

Course Instructor: Khang Phem

Course Price: $20 per month

This is another in-depth and comprehensive online course designed specifically for preparing for machine learning interviews. The course covers a wide range of machine learning concepts and techniques, including data preprocessing, feature engineering, model selection, evaluation metrics, and more.

The course provides detailed explanations, practical examples, and coding exercises to help learners understand and apply machine learning concepts effectively. The content is well-structured, organized, and presented in a clear and concise manner, making it easy to follow along.

The course also includes practice problems and quizzes that help reinforce the learned concepts. Additionally, the course is offered by Educative, a reputable online learning platform known for its high-quality educational content.

Course Duration: 1 hour

Course Rating: 4 stars out of 5

Course Instructor: Educative

Course Price: $20 per month

Overall, “Grokking The Machine Learning Interview [Educative]” is a valuable resource for anyone preparing for machine learning interviews, providing the knowledge and practice needed to confidently tackle machine learning interview questions.

This fantastic course will help you polish your machine learning skills. You will be able to do this by grokking your way to getting a very good machine learning job.

Review of Grokking The Machine Learning Interview [Educative]

System Design Interview Cheat Sheet

And, here is also a nice System Design cheat sheet form Educative.io to quickly revise all essential System design concepts and topics for interviews. It also share their 8 step framework to solve any System design problem on interviews:

Conclusion

If you liked this review of Educative’s Grokking Modern System Design For Software Engineers And Managers, feel free to share it with your friends and family. You can also drop a comment if you have any doubts about this course and we will get back to you in an instant. I have no doubt that this course will transform you from a complete beginner to a system design expert within a matter of weeks or months.

Other Programming Articles and Tutorials you may like

Thanks for reading this article so far. If you know any excellent
online resources like websites or programming platforms to learn System Design and Software Designing,
especially for beginners, which you think complements these two
websites, then feel free to share. Everybody loves great resources and
happy learning System design.

P. S. – If
you are looking for a free online course to learn System Design and
Software design then I also suggest you to checkout these free System design courses. This 2-hour free course is great resource to prepare for System design interviews in 2025.