Babel Tower - continuous learning

programmer jiaozi — Wed, 28 Oct 2026 09:00:32 +0000

Hello everyone, My name is Jiaozi, a software engineer at one of China’s top-three internet companies.

First of all, I decided to build a real internet system from scratch, using "practical + verification" to learn system architecture design, and share my learning in Chinese and English.

Why am I undertaking this initiative? There are three core motivations:

My goal is to become a T-type programmer. T-type programmer means having enough knowledge breadth, and then deepening in a field. AI age is coming, so the requirements for breadth and depth are higher, so I still persist in working on internet architecture design.
I have obvious shorts. I work in the FinTech field, and I know little about front-end and other business scene system design issues. I hope to fill these gaps, improve my architecture design ability, and practice my Chinese and English expression.
The internet system learning materials on the market are mostly paper talk, lack of practical, and cannot see the real running effect. Only by building it myself can I verify whether an architecture design is correct.
So, how will I execute this plan? I have structured the learning process into three progressive stages:

a. From zero to functional system: build necessary components from bottom to top, including database, backend service + registry, Web BFF, front-end and gateway. Each component is accompanied by monitoring.

b. Deep learning in combination with system design scene: after the necessary components are built, I will learn system architecture design around specific business scenes, introduce new components as needed, and understand the configuration of existing components in depth.

c. Systematic learning of each component: on the practical basis, I will also learn each component in depth.

Stage 2 is the cornerstone of this effort. I will build real business scenes and extreme scenes around this system to verify the architecture design. So it is not just an internet system, but also a test and verification system that can easily construct extreme scenes.

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Babel Tower - continuous learning