General

Best resources for learning system design from scratch

Lakshay Desai

8/27/2025

I want to start learning system design but there are too many resources and I'm confused where to begin.

I've heard of:

"Designing Data-Intensive Applications" (book)
Gaurav Sen's YouTube
System Design Primer (GitHub)
Alex Xu's System Design Interview books

Which one should I start with for a beginner with 1-2 years of experience? And is there a structured order/roadmap to follow?

system-designresourcesbeginnerlearning

Comments (1)

Rohan Mishra11 months ago

Hey Lakshay! For beginners, I'd suggest starting with Gaurav Sen's YouTube channel. He explains concepts really well with examples and it's good if you prefer visual learning. After you get a hang of basics, dive into 'Designing Data-Intensive Applications'. It's a bit dense but very comprehensive.