I was part of Arpit Bhayani’s System Design cohort in August 2024, and it turned out to be one of the most rewarding learning experiences I’ve had in a while.
What made it different from the usual system design content out there is the emphasis on actually building things, rather than just drawing boxes and arrows on a whiteboard. Instead of talking about a rate limiter or a load balancer in the abstract, we implemented the actual thing from scratch, which forced a much deeper, more precise understanding of the trade-offs involved.
That hands-on approach gave me a far more detailed grasp of system design than I had going in, and honestly, it reignited my interest in software engineering.