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Comment by posharma | Hacker News Reader

Designing Data Intensive Applications (DDIA) is the best book I’ve come across when it comes to serious system design.

Agreed but that is not focused on interview prep. These days to clear tech interviews you have to "study to the test". So if you want to do real system design yeah study DDIA but if you want to clear a system design interview study books like the one in TFA.

> These days to clear tech interviews you have to "study to the test".

It might help, but it's not necessary from my experience. I've gotten into a FAANG company (an SRE position) without 'studying the test', just studying practically applicable materials. And I know plenty of other people who did the same.

This is optimizing for least study time (sometimes from zero knowledge) by studying to the test. If you're saying that studying applicable materials is quicker, then this book is useless. Once you've "made it", you can explore things at a more leisurely pace (notably while gaining experience).

I suspect the next thing to counter too much studying to the test will be to add an additional type of interview round (leetcode/system design/new thing) to the process, further extending it.

Sorry if dumb question, but what is "TFA"?

”The Fine Article” that this discussion is about :-)

It stands for "the f-ing article," i.e. the link in the original post.

(When you have to explain it, you realize that a lot of common terminology in the "tech community" kind of sucks!)

DDIA is an amazing book, but it's way, way too deep for any kind of interview. If you read DDIA cover to cover, you know what I mean.

DDIA is to system design, as a computer science textbook is to the algo interview.

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