posts about system design

system design

Books

  1. Antifragile - Nassim Nicholas Taleb
    A go-to book on dealing with uncertainty and building robust systems.

  2. Getting Real - DHH, Jason Frie
    If you are building information products and haven’t read this one, drop everything and read this.

  3. The Mythical Man-month - Frederick P. Brooks J
    The core idea is that putting more people on a project doesn’t necessarily increase delivery time. This is especially true for software products. Great book for Managers.

  4. Thinking in Systems - Donella Meadow
    Not read yet.

  5. Don’t Make Me Think - Steve Kru A common-sense approach to building user interfaces. The book outlines the difference between what we think about what we have created and what users perceive.

  6. The Design of Everyday Things - Don Norma Norman points out, from first principles, just how badly designed a lot of our environment is.

Articles, Papers, Videos

  1. How to Build Good Software – Li Hongy
    The takeaway from this is that building software boils down to managing complexity. “Software Is about Developing Knowledge More than Writing Code” – Li Hongyi.

  2. Christopher Alexander: A Primer – Ryan Singe
    A video lecture introducing the work of Christopher Alexander by @rjs. It speaks about the core concepts of form, fit, context, and how to navigate the fifteen books written by Christopher Alexander. There are a lot of pointers to start from and connect the dots.

  3. Resilience in Complex Adaptive Systems - Richard Coo
    A lecture on why systems don’t fail (or fail?). It introduces the Rasmussen’s system model and how to think about safety-critical systems.

  4. Gall’s Law - John Gal
    All complex systems that work evolved from simpler systems that worked. If you want to build a complex system that works, build a simpler system first, and then improve it over time.