3 quick tips on how to build more scalable systems [System Design Sundays]

Using these 3 easy tips, you will be

Apr 17, 2023

Hey, it’s your favorite cult leader here 🐱‍👤

On Sundays, I will go over various Systems Design topics⚙⚙. These can be mock interviews, writeups by various organizations, or overviews of topics that you need to design better systems. 📝📝

If you’d like to work with me after I graduate in a month, my resume is here. You can reach me through my LinkedIn here

Scale is a complex topic, one that requires a lot of time to get right. Designing scalable systems requires a combination of domain knowledge, engineering ability, and a lot of experimentation. The whole point of software is to handle rote, repetitive, and/or high-precision tasks that would be too infeasible/impractical for a human to handle. This often involves building systems that can run millions, billions, or even trillions of instructions very quickly.

In this email, I will share with you 3 easy tips on how to build more scalable systems that can handle growing demand and workload. These will be tips that you can implement relatively easily and will boost the performance of your systems significantly.

Sound exciting? Let’s get right into it-

3 Tips to design more scalable software systems

Location matters- Software should be close to the client to reduce the response time. You can use techniques like content delivery networks (CDNs), edge computing, or geo-replication to achieve this. A CDN is a distributed network of servers that can efficiently deliver web content to users by caching their content at strategically placed physical nodes across the world. Edge computing is a paradigm that moves computation and data storage closer to the location where it is needed, to improve response times and save bandwidth (learn more). Geo-replication is a technique that replicates data across multiple regions or continents for faster access and disaster recover.
Cache where possible. Don't do things over and over again when you can simply cache them and have faster software. You can use techniques like in-memory caching, database caching, or web caching to achieve this. In-memory caching is a technique that stores frequently used data in the memory of a server or a cluster of servers for faster retrieval. Database caching is a technique that stores the results of common database queries in a cache layer for faster access. Web caching is a technique that stores copies of web pages or web objects (such as images, scripts, etc.) on a server or a browser for faster delivery.
Use asynchronous processing where possible. Don't make your system wait for synchronous responses when you can use asynchronous techniques like message queues, event-driven architectures, or microservices to achieve this. Message queues are software components that enable asynchronous communication between different processes or services by sending and receiving messages through a queue. Event-driven architectures are software architectures that rely on the production and consumption of events (changes in state) by different components or services. Microservices are software architectures that decompose an application into small, independent, and loosely coupled services that communicate through well-defined interfaces.

These are three easy solutions you can use to make your systems higher-performing at low costs. Keep in mind- true scalability comes from domain expertise and task-specific optimization. This requires more effort and will be accomplished by reading lots of technical blogs and watching many technical breakdowns in your domain. One channel I’ve been enjoying a lot recently is Hussain Nasser. Highly recommend his work. Check out his analysis of Facebook’s notorious outrage from 2021 here.

That is it for this piece. I appreciate your time. As always, if you’re interested in working with me or checking out my other work, my links will be at the end of this email/post. If you like my writing, I would really appreciate an anonymous testimonial. You can drop it here. And if you found value in this write-up, I would appreciate you sharing it with more people. It is word-of-mouth referrals like yours that help me grow.

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