100 Best System Design Books of All Time
We've researched and ranked the best system design books in the world, based on recommendations from world experts, sales data, and millions of reader ratings. Learn more
In 1975, Ray Dalio founded an investment firm, Bridgewater Associates, out of his two-bedroom apartment in New York City. Forty years later, Bridgewater has made more money for its clients than any other hedge fund in history and grown into the fifth most important private... more
Mark CubanThe book I wish I had as a young entrepreneur. (Source)
Tony RobbinsI found it to be truly extraordinary. Every page is full of so many principles of distinction and insights—and I love how Ray incorporates his history and his life in such an elegant way. (Source)
Bill GatesRay Dalio has provided me with invaluable guidance and insights that are now available to you in Principles. (Source)
Proven approaches such as service-oriented and event-driven architectures are joined by newer techniques such as microservices, reactive architectures, DevOps, and stream processing. Many of these patterns are successful by themselves, but as this practical ebook demonstrates, they provide a more holistic and compelling approach when applied together.
Author Ben Stopford explains how service-based... more
Some of the biggest problems facing the world—war, hunger, poverty, and environmental degradation—are essentially system... more
Tobi Lütke[Tobi Lütke recommended this book on the podcast "The Knowledge Project".] (Source)
Kate RaworthIt was a real revelation for me to discover such a different approach to thinking and analysing challenges. (Source)
Mira KirshenbaumA nice overview of how initial conditions lead to patterns that determine what the relationship feels like to the people in it (Source)
Throughout the book, you’ll explore relevant material gleaned from numerous books, papers, blog posts, and the source code of several open source databases. These resources are listed at the end of parts one... more
Steve JurvetsonThe single book that’s had the most influence on me my entire life. [...] It started my life long fascination of the biological metaphors in technology. (Source)
Geoffrey Miller@kevin2kelly Love that book. Read it in grad school. Inspired my evolutionary robotics and artificial life research. (Source)
Cynthia JohnsonThis book was the basis of The Matrix. It goes down this rabbit hole of where machines begin and end, and where we fit into that. The entire idea is that as we move into this revolutionary, technology-driven world, we then also become parts of that. (Source)
Jeff Bezos[From "The Everything Store", written by Brad Stone] “An influential computer scientist makes the counterintuitive argument that small groups of engineers are more effective than larger ones at handling complex software projects. The book lays out the theory behind Amazon’s two pizza teams,” Stone writes. (Source)
As with his other books, Martin's Clean Architecture doesn't merely present multiple choices and options, and say "use your best judgment": it tells you what choices to make, and why those choices are critical to your success. Martin offers direct, no-nonsense answers to key architecture and design questions like:
What are the best high level... more
At any given moment, somewhere in the world someone struggles with the same software design problems you have. You know you don't want to reinvent the wheel (or worse, a flat tire), so you look to Design Patterns--the lessons learned by those who've faced the same problems. With Design Patterns, you get to take advantage of the best practices and experience of others, so that you can spend your time on...something else. Something more challenging. Something more complex. Something more fun.
You want to learn about the patterns that matter--why to... more
Don't have time to read the top System Design books of all time? Read Shortform summaries.
Shortform summaries help you learn 10x faster by:
- Being comprehensive: you learn the most important points in the book
- Cutting out the fluff: you focus your time on what's important to know
- Interactive exercises: apply the book's ideas to your own life with our educators' guidance.
Authored by Product Managers at Google, Microsoft, and Facebook, Swipe to Unlock is a guide which enables anyone to understand the core concepts of tech and the business strategy behind it in order to succeed in the tech industry or even just be an informed digital citizen and consumer.
This #1 Amazon Business Bestseller has been featured in Business Insider and was touted as "our... more
Microservice technologies are moving quickly. Author Sam Newman provides you with a firm grounding in the concepts while diving into current solutions... more
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The authors begin by describing what patterns are and how they can help you design object-oriented software. They then go on to systematically name, explain, evaluate, and catalog recurring designs in... more
--M. Fowler (1999) For more than twenty years, experienced programmers worldwide have relied on Martin Fowler's Refactoring to improve the design of existing code and to enhance software maintainability, as well as to make existing code easier to understand.
This eagerly awaited new edition has been fully updated to reflect crucial changes in the programming landscape. ... more
David Heinemeier HanssonThis is next on my list of technical books to read! Refactoring is one of two programming books that I’ve read multiple times (the other is Smalltalk Best Practice Patterns), and I’m due for another reading. What perfect time then to dive into Martin Fowler’s long anticipated 2nd edition, now using JavaScript rather than Java for the code examples. Like the stoic books, I read Refactoring and... (Source)
Jeff Morris Jr.@briannekimmel @Lethain Great book — highly recommend. (Source)
Charity MajorsHoly fuckola. I got ~4 pages through @lethain's new book before realizing "this might be the best book I have ever read on engineering teams" and by page 42 I knew for sure. Every engineer should read this. Not just managers. https://t.co/cNI53wS4bK (Source)
If you're a developer and don't want to be on call for 3AM for the rest of your life, this book will help.
In Release It!, Michael T. Nygard shows you how to design and architect your... more
Don't have time to read the top System Design books of all time? Read Shortform summaries.
Shortform summaries help you learn 10x faster by:
- Being comprehensive: you learn the most important points in the book
- Cutting out the fluff: you focus your time on what's important to know
- Interactive exercises: apply the book's ideas to your own life with our educators' guidance.
In this book, Michael Feathers offers start-to-finish strategies for working more effectively with large, untested legacy code bases. This book draws on material Michael created for his renowned Object Mentor seminars, techniques... more
Advance your electronics knowledge and gain the skills necessary to develop and construct your own functioning gadgets. Written by a pair of experienced engineers and dedicated hobbyists, Practical Electronics for Inventors, Fourth Edition, lays out the essentials and provides step-by-step instructions, schematics, and illustrations. Discover how to select the right components, design and build circuits, use microcontrollers and ICs, work with the latest software tools, and test and tweak your creations.... more
Intended as the text for a college... more
Wanted to work at an exciting futuristic company?
Struggled with an interview problem thatcould have been solved in 15 minutes?
Wished you could study real-world computing problems?
If so, you need to read Elements of Programming Interviews (EPI).
EPI is your comprehensive guide to interviewing for software development roles.
The core of EPI is a collection of over 250 problems with... more
"Rainwater Harvesting for Drylands and Beyond, Volume 1, 3rd Edition" is the best-selling, award-winning guide on how to conceptualize, design, and implement life-enhancing water-, sun-, wind-, and shade-harvesting systems for your home, landscape, and community. This book enables you to assess your on-site resources, gives you a diverse array of strategies to maximize their potential, and empowers you with guiding principles to create an integrated, multi-functional plan specific to your site and needs.
Clearly written with... more
In this greatly expanded new edition, you'll find clearer explanations, a more streamlined organization, increased coverage of current technologies and comprehensive case studies of the author's award-winning work in the field.
As the only book devoted exclusively to modern tools and... more
Don't have time to read the top System Design books of all time? Read Shortform summaries.
Shortform summaries help you learn 10x faster by:
- Being comprehensive: you learn the most important points in the book
- Cutting out the fluff: you focus your time on what's important to know
- Interactive exercises: apply the book's ideas to your own life with our educators' guidance.
McGraw-Hill Series in Artificial Intelligence. less
No soil? No sunlight? No problem. A hydroponic growing system gives you the power to grow plants anywhere. Even if you live in an area where water is scarce, a hydroponic system is the answer you’ve been looking for. Hydroponic systems are sealed and do not allow evaporation, making water loss virtually nonexistent. Simply suspend your essential... more
Authors Neal Ford and Mark Richards help you learn through examples in a variety of popular programming languages, such... more
This book introduces the theory and practice of pattern-directed refactorings: sequences of low-level refactorings that allow designers to safely move designs... more
Microservice Patterns... more
Don't have time to read the top System Design books of all time? Read Shortform summaries.
Shortform summaries help you learn 10x faster by:
- Being comprehensive: you learn the most important points in the book
- Cutting out the fluff: you focus your time on what's important to know
- Interactive exercises: apply the book's ideas to your own life with our educators' guidance.
Inside the Machine, from the co-founder of the highly respected Ars Technica website, explains how microprocessors operate-what they do and how they do it. The book uses analogies, full-color diagrams, and... more
Authors Pete Warden and Daniel Situnayake explain how you can train models that are small enough to fit into any environment, including small embedded devices that can run... more
Water is a crucial resource increasingly under stress. Yet rainfall, even in arid climates, can make up a sizable portion of any home, acreage, or farm's water requirements if harvested and utilized with care. The key is appropriate planning and high-quality site- and climate-specific design.
Essential Rainwater Harvesting is a comprehensive manual for designing, building, and maintaining water harvesting systems for the warm and cold climates of the world. Presenting design considerations and... more
A guide that will cover everything in Cisco Routing and Switching Command, including Subnetting, vlsm and Supernetting. You will be able pass your CCNA (Cisco Certified Networking Associate) exam and become a Cisco technology specialist sooner than you expected.
The book is structured on 4 modules, which are exactly the ones you need for CCNA. Every command you have to know is presented and explained here.... more
* Neural networks, a beautiful biologically-inspired programming paradigm which enables a computer to learn from observational data
* Deep learning, a powerful set of techniques for learning in neural networks
Neural networks and deep learning currently provide the best solutions to many problems in image recognition, speech recognition, and natural language processing. This book will teach you the core concepts... more
Ben Goldacre@szbalint it's such a great book, i've always said @rossjanderson should release it in chunks as pop science books. the massive textbook shape doesn't do its accessibility, readability and content justice! (Source)
Don't have time to read the top System Design books of all time? Read Shortform summaries.
Shortform summaries help you learn 10x faster by:
- Being comprehensive: you learn the most important points in the book
- Cutting out the fluff: you focus your time on what's important to know
- Interactive exercises: apply the book's ideas to your own life with our educators' guidance.
--Scott Hanselman, ComputerZen.com
"Raymond has been at Microsoft for many years and has seen many nuances of Windows that others could only ever hope to get a glimpse of. With this book, Raymond shares his knowledge, experience, and anecdotal stories, allowing all of us to get a better understanding of the operating system that affects millions of people every day. This book has something for everyone, is a casual read, and I highly recommend it!"
--Jeffrey Richter, Author/Consultant,... more
The fun and easy way to get a grip on photovoltaic design and installation
Designing and installing solar panel systems is a trend that continues to grow. With 'green collar' jobs on the rise and homeowners looking for... more
The necromancer Koray, however, is far from what he expected. He is beautiful, stubborn, and possessed of a tongue sharp enough to cut down even the High Paladin himself. Koray is also possessed of a strength... more
Don't have time to read the top System Design books of all time? Read Shortform summaries.
Shortform summaries help you learn 10x faster by:
- Being comprehensive: you learn the most important points in the book
- Cutting out the fluff: you focus your time on what's important to know
- Interactive exercises: apply the book's ideas to your own life with our educators' guidance.
When it comes to development speed, time-to-market, and continuous delivery, microservices can do wonders for your organization. Author Jonas Bonér, Founder and CTO of Lightbend and... more
Souders' previous book, the bestselling High Performance Web Sites, shocked the web development world by revealing that 80% of the time it takes for a web page to load is on the client side. In Even Faster Web... more
Written by an expert who’s created embedded systems ranging from urban surveillance and... more
《大型网站技术架构:核心原理与案例分析》不仅适用于指导网站工程师、架构师进行网站技术架构设计,也可用于指导产品经理、项目经理、测试运维人员等了解网站技术架构的基础概念;还可供包括企业系统开发人员在内的各类软件开发从业人员借鉴,了解大型网站的解决方案和开发理念。 less
User experience design is the discipline of creating a useful and usable Web site or application--one that's easily navigated and meets the needs of both the site owner and its users. But there's a lot more to successful UX design than knowing the latest Web technologies or design trends: It takes diplomacy, project management skills,... more
Don't have time to read the top System Design books of all time? Read Shortform summaries.
Shortform summaries help you learn 10x faster by:
- Being comprehensive: you learn the most important points in the book
- Cutting out the fluff: you focus your time on what's important to know
- Interactive exercises: apply the book's ideas to your own life with our educators' guidance.
Vicki BoykisThis is a textbook that covers how computers work from the ground up. It includes hardware, software, and operating systems. It’s a really thick book, but also a really good one! This is the book I’d recommend reading if you missed out on a formal computer science education. (Source)
Widely lauded for avoiding the typical black box approach found in other operating system textbooks, the first edition of this bestselling book taught readers how an operating system works and explained how to build it from the ground up.
Continuing to follow a logical pattern for system design, Operating System Design: The Xinu Approach, Second Edition removes the mystery from operating system design and consolidates the body of material into a systematic... more
The computing world today is in the middle of a revolution: mobile clients and cloud computing have emerged as the dominant paradigms driving programming and hardware innovation today. The Fifth Edition of Computer Architecture focuses on this dramatic shift, exploring the ways in which software and technology in the cloud are accessed by cell phones, tablets, laptops, and other mobile computing devices. Each chapter includes two real-world examples, one mobile and one datacenter, to illustrate this revolutionary change.
Updated to cover the mobile computing... more
Two previous O'Reilly books from Google--Site Reliability Engineering and The Site Reliability Workbook--demonstrated how and why a commitment to... more
With a defined set of components and guidelines, designers can focus their efforts on solving user needs rather than recreating elements and reinventing solutions. You'll learn how to use an interface inventory to surface inconsistencies and inefficient solutions,... more
Don't have time to read the top System Design books of all time? Read Shortform summaries.
Shortform summaries help you learn 10x faster by:
- Being comprehensive: you learn the most important points in the book
- Cutting out the fluff: you focus your time on what's important to know
- Interactive exercises: apply the book's ideas to your own life with our educators' guidance.
In the 1980s, the tech revolution was kickstarted by a flood of relatively inexpensive, highly programmable computers like the Commodore. Now, a second revolution in computing is beginning with the Raspberry Pi. Learning Computer Architecture with the Raspberry Pi is the premier guide to understanding the components of the most exciting tech product available. Thanks to this book, every Raspberry Pi owner can understand how the computer works and how to access all of its hardware and software... more
Raspberry Pi Project Handbook is a beginner-friendly collection of electronics projects, perfectly suited for kids, parents, educators, and hobbyists looking to level up their hardware skills.
After a crash course to get you set up with your Raspberry Pi, you'll learn how to build interactive projects like a digital drum set; a WiFi controlled robot;... more
Ivar Jacobson, Ivar Jacobson Consulting
"I just finished reading HF OOA&D and I loved it! The thing I liked most about this book was its focus on why we do OOA&D-to write great software!"
Kyle Brown, Distinguished Engineer, IBM
"Hidden behind the funny pictures and crazy fonts is a serious, intelligent,... more
This book's techniques... more
Don't have time to read the top System Design books of all time? Read Shortform summaries.
Shortform summaries help you learn 10x faster by:
- Being comprehensive: you learn the most important points in the book
- Cutting out the fluff: you focus your time on what's important to know
- Interactive exercises: apply the book's ideas to your own life with our educators' guidance.
No way. You'll be building fortresses, setting traps, and hoarding supplies, because you, savvy survivor, have snatched up your copy of The Maker's Guide to the Zombie Apocalypse before it's too late. This indispensable guide to survival after Z-day, written by hardware hacker and zombie anthropologist Simon Monk, will teach you how to generate your own electricity, salvage parts, craft essential electronics, and out-survive the... more
The book describes a variety of possible designs, ranging from the most reliable (and often most expensive) foundation... more
Updated for the Arduino 1.8 release, the recipes in this third edition include practical examples and guidance to help you begin, expand, and enhance... more
A significant revision of a best-selling text for the introductory digital signal processing course. This book presents the fundamentals of discrete-time signals, systems, and modern digital processing and applications for students in electrical engineering, computer engineering, and computer science.The book is suitable for either a one-semester or a two-semester undergraduate level course in discrete systems and digital signal processing. It is also intended for use in a one-semester first-year graduate-level course in digital signal processing.
lessDon't have time to read the top System Design books of all time? Read Shortform summaries.
Shortform summaries help you learn 10x faster by:
- Being comprehensive: you learn the most important points in the book
- Cutting out the fluff: you focus your time on what's important to know
- Interactive exercises: apply the book's ideas to your own life with our educators' guidance.