Hey there! 👋 I'm Sourav, and I've been deep in the trenches of system design, backend engineering, and building things that actually scale. This is my curated collection of practical guides that'll help you move from "theory" to "shipped."
📚 My Core Articles on System Design
1. Scaling from Zero: Building Your First Production System
The foundational piece every engineer needs
Learn how to think about scalability from day one—before you even need it. We'll cover database design decisions, caching strategies, and why that microservices architecture isn't the answer... yet.
2. Database Design That Won't Bite You Later
Because schema changes at 3 AM are nobody's idea of fun
We'll walk through real examples of what breaks when you scale, why indexes matter more than you think, and how to avoid the "we need to rewrite our database" moment.
3. Caching Patterns That Actually Work
Redis, memcached, and when to say no to both
Cache invalidation is one of the hardest problems in computer science. Here's how to get it right without losing your mind. Plus, real code examples you can use tomorrow.
4. APIs That Don't Make People Hate You
RESTful design, versioning, and rate limiting for humans
A deep dive into designing APIs that are actually a pleasure to work with. We'll cover versioning strategies, error handling, and why your webhook implementation is probably broken.
5. Message Queues: When, Why, and How Not to Overcomplicate Them
Async processing that makes sense
RabbitMQ, Kafka, AWS SQS—they all have their place. Learn when to use them, when you're overengineering, and how to debug async systems when things go sideways.
🎯 The Quick Wins (Short Reads)
Handling Database Migrations in Production — Don't lock your tables. Here's how.
Monitoring > Hoping — Three metrics that matter more than you think.
The Anatomy of a Good Error Message — Because "something went wrong" won't cut it.
Load Balancing Without the Headache — Round-robin, least connections, and sticky sessions explained.
💡 Why You Should Follow CoreCraft
I write about the stuff that actually matters when you're building systems that users depend on. No fluff, no "10 tips" listicles—just real problems, real solutions, and code you can actually use.
Every week, I share:
- Practical guides that go deep without being overwhelming
- Real-world lessons from shipping products at scale
- Code examples you can adapt to your stack
- The "why" behind the "how" so you understand the tradeoffs
Whether you're architecting your first major system or debugging production issues, there's something here for you.
🚀 Next Steps
Want more like this? Subscribe to CoreCraft on Substack for weekly deep dives into system design, backend engineering, and building products that work.
I'm also active on Dev.to and happy to engage in the comments—ask questions, share your experiences, and let me know what topics you want to see explored next.
Your next system design breakthrough is waiting. Let's build it.
Follow @CoreCraft for the latest in system design and engineering blogs
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