What’s the difference between volume 1 and volume 2? Shall I read volume 1 first before reading volume 2? This short post aims to answer those questions.
Volume 1 and volume 2 cover a different set of system design interview questions and solutions. Although reading Volume 1 is helpful, it is not required.
Stats:
Volume 1: 16 chapters, 320 pages, 6x9 inch paper
Volume 2: 13 chapters, 434 pages, 7x10 inch paper
Things to consider before you buy:
What topics are you interested in?
Volume 1 focuses more on the fundamentals. It is more beginner-friendly.
Volume 2 focuses more on identifying bottlenecks and discussing design trade-offs. It’s beginner-friendly. But since it covers more advanced topics, experienced developers are likely to learn more from volume 2.
Table of content for volume 1:
Chapter 1: Scale From Zero To Millions Of Users
Chapter 2: Back-of-the-envelope Estimation
Chapter 3: A Framework For System Design Interviews
Chapter 4: Design A Rate Limiter
Chapter 5: Design Consistent Hashing
Chapter 6: Design A Key-value Store
Chapter 7: Design A Unique Id Generator In Distributed Systems
Chapter 8: Design A Url Shortener
Chapter 9: Design A Web Crawler
Chapter 10: Design A Notification System
Chapter 11: Design A News Feed System
Chapter 12: Design A Chat System
Chapter 13: Design A Search Autocomplete System
Chapter 14: Design Youtube
Chapter 15: Design Google Drive
Chapter 16: The Learning Continues
Table of content for volume 2:
Chapter 1: Proximity Service
Chapter 2: Nearby Friends
Chapter 3: Google Maps
Chapter 4: Distributed Message Queue
Chapter 5: Metrics Monitoring
Chapter 6: Ad Click Event Aggregation
Chapter 7: Hotel Reservation
Chapter 8: Distributed Email Service
Chapter 9: S3-like Object Storage
Chapter 10: Real-time Gaming Leaderboard
Chapter 11: Payment System
Chapter 12: Digital Wallet
Chapter 13: Stock Exchange