IMHO, and this is really just my personal opinion, the only way to learn how to build a big system is to build one and learn the extent of your ignorance by fai

IMHO, and this is really just my personal opinion, the only way to learn how to build a big system is to build one and learn the extent of your ignorance by failing at it the first few times out. I started a decade ago on my first job on a 20.000 line web app developed with two other guys. Over time that became a 700.000 line system developed by several dozens of people and on track to be a million lines in two years. Between then and now I've learned that I'm very ignorant. I still feel like I'm trying to figure this stuff out and not quite succeeding. :) As a good second-best choice, try contributing to a large open source project. No books will teach you this stuff, you have to do it to learn it.