System Design
Two million games, one running clock
Plate two: two players sharing one truth while the clock runs, and why the bravest thing a real-time system can do is stop.
Distributed Systems
System Design
Designing a URL shortener for its worst day
Resilience is a design input, not a deep dive at the end. The first in a series: the smallest system everyone knows, designed around the question of what is allowed to die.
Payments
Moving money is hard
Most software engineers think a payment is a database transaction. The payments industry has spent decades proving otherwise.
Architecture
Caching is easy until it isn't
Most caching strategies look brilliant during architecture reviews and become considerably less impressive the first time stale data reaches production.