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ByteByteGo seems to almost be a content generation concept for a niche market. And the thing is, aspiring developers do, apparently eat this stuff up. Thing is

ByteByteGo seems to almost be a content generation concept for a niche market. And the thing is, aspiring developers do, apparently eat this stuff up. Thing is though, you really don't truly assimilate these concepts from a simple diagram, not just because they are gross simplifications or crude approximations — they are — but because you need to "feel" what these systems are like in a real world scenario or at least to have broken your teeth designing one in order for any of these ideas to truly sink in a meaningful way. So it's sort of like...if you have the experience of having designed these types of systems or are familiar with some of these ideas from firsthand experience, the cute diagrams hold very little value. If, on the other hand, you're a new engineer, you're gobbling up these diagrams, but they don't really hold any meaning. You can't just binge on some doc that attempts to collate all system design ideas and think you've got it. Knowledge isn't acquired by "carrying books". Now, I'm not saying there might not be value in these diagrams as a refresher or tool for someone already familiar with these concepts, but it's limited to that and I suspect newer devs are being led to believe they can just memorize these diagrams and they grok these ideas. Not so. I also cannot help but feel the author sees this area and audience as fertile ground for producing a ton of content and gaining readership - it's substack, it's blog posts...and the list goes on. I really try to avoid imputing bad motive or malintent, but I can't help but feel this is cynical in the sense that the author knows this information in this format targeting this audience does very little for them and, worse, leads them astray because of how at odds it is presented vs the way real knowledge is actually acquired. I guess what I'm mainly saying is: beware, young devs. This ain't it.

kmiller96 3y ago
Disagree. ByteByteGo is great for a 50,000ft view of a topic. It's useful to watch/listen/read ByteByteGo for a first pass at a topic and learn the correct terminology in that domain. It's also useful for scratching the itch of "huh, how does that work?" without having to allocate 100 hours of "breaking your teeth" learning the concept. IMO any knowledge is good knowledge, even if it's a simplification of the topic (and the reader is aware it's a simplification).
koonsolo 3y ago
Master in CS with 20+ years of professional experience chiming in here > because you need to "feel" what these systems are like I've done a lot of job hopping and seen a lot of technologies and companies. There is no way will you ever really experience even 10% of the information found on that page. In my opinion, it seems like a great resource, and bookmarked it to go through it when I have some time. Telling young devs to "gain experience" is pretty useless information. Learning theory is a large part of our job.
tonyhart7 3y ago
still better than nothing, because in YouTube there are really not a lot of content like this, most people that create content like this are faang employee and you still missing a lot of nuance sure You cant really 100% translate it to your requirement but it give mind map to a lot of people to start
namaria 3y ago
Maps won't teach you an intuition for tactics. Without maps tho, the best tactician is severely handicapped.
krowek 3y ago
This seems to be a never-ending story. There are companies out there doing system design interviews to candidates with 3 years old experience and that's mostly the target of ByteByteGo. I may say, desperate people trying to digest the most they can in the less time to increase the chances of getting a job. Same as people grinding LeetCode in record time to nail a job. BBG content is good if you want to learn about use cases and how things work if you're already in position of taking responsibilities for the implementation of technologies like those, or you have a say in your team/project. If you're never gonna work with them, then it's just reading for nothing, you'll end up forgetting those things exist.

kmiller96 3y ago

Disagree. ByteByteGo is great for a 50,000ft view of a topic. It's useful to watch/listen/read ByteByteGo for a first pass at a topic and learn the correct terminology in that domain. It's also useful for scratching the itch of "huh, how does that work?" without having to allocate 100 hours of "breaking your teeth" learning the concept. IMO any knowledge is good knowledge, even if it's a simplification of the topic (and the reader is aware it's a simplification).

koonsolo 3y ago

Master in CS with 20+ years of professional experience chiming in here > because you need to "feel" what these systems are like I've done a lot of job hopping and seen a lot of technologies and companies. There is no way will you ever really experience even 10% of the information found on that page. In my opinion, it seems like a great resource, and bookmarked it to go through it when I have some time. Telling young devs to "gain experience" is pretty useless information. Learning theory is a large part of our job.

tonyhart7 3y ago

still better than nothing, because in YouTube there are really not a lot of content like this, most people that create content like this are faang employee and you still missing a lot of nuance sure You cant really 100% translate it to your requirement but it give mind map to a lot of people to start

namaria 3y ago

Maps won't teach you an intuition for tactics. Without maps tho, the best tactician is severely handicapped.

krowek 3y ago

This seems to be a never-ending story. There are companies out there doing system design interviews to candidates with 3 years old experience and that's mostly the target of ByteByteGo. I may say, desperate people trying to digest the most they can in the less time to increase the chances of getting a job. Same as people grinding LeetCode in record time to nail a job. BBG content is good if you want to learn about use cases and how things work if you're already in position of taking responsibilities for the implementation of technologies like those, or you have a say in your team/project. If you're never gonna work with them, then it's just reading for nothing, you'll end up forgetting those things exist.