Ask HN: What is best way to do hands-on practice for system design?

Re:Ask HN: What is best way to do hands-on practice for syst... by maddynator on Saturday July 16, 2022 @03:18AM (#32115910)

I would advise against it. Two reasons: - if the person interviewing you know the specific tech you picked, you give them an opening to control the interview. They can go anywhere they want and you would likely fall short unless you know the stack in&out

- when you pick specific technology, you also have to defend why this one specifically. For ex, why redis and not memcache or why only postgres and not redshift..

If you keep it at sql and no-sql, you can easily defend the answer and control the interview

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Re:Ask HN: What is best way to do hands-on practice for syst... by bluesnowmonkey on Saturday July 16, 2022 @03:58AM (#32116076)

As an interviewer I ding people who don’t understand the underlying capabilities. They often matter!

Like if the design depends on modifying two keys atomically, a transaction is required. Some KV stores have that ability, some don’t. Do you need the keys to be in the same shard now? What kind of persistence is required here?

Redis and Memcache are quite different where the rubber meets the road. Gotta know what you’re talking about, don’t handwave over the details.

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Re:Ask HN: What is best way to do hands-on practice for syst... by patrulek on Saturday July 16, 2022 @03:29AM (#32115970)

I would also advise against it. At this level i would expect the more abstractive way of thinking. I don't see a reason to go so much in detail right now. Model > tools.

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Re:Ask HN: What is best way to do hands-on practice for syst... by nly on Saturday July 16, 2022 @07:17PM (#32122829)

I interviewed someone who put an Amazon AWS product in every box on their design and was unable to explain how each would solve a particular problem except "Amazon product X solves this for us". No abstract thinking.

Strong no.

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Re:Ask HN: What is best way to do hands-on practice for syst... by manimino on Saturday July 16, 2022 @08:51AM (#32117523)

Great point. It's also hazardous if your interviewer does NOT know the specific tech you suggest. They may reject it with "Sounds suspicious, if that's any good why haven't I heard of it?"

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