If you’re looking for a transformational 8-week experience that will boost your ability to understand and build real-world systems, then this is the best course for you! Over the course of this cohort, I feel I’ve grown significantly as an engineer in many domains - knowledge and understanding of engineering systems, ability to understand and approach system design problems, brainstorming and decision-making.

The amount of technical depth covered (both theoretical and practical) in this course is unparalleled and would set up a great foundation for any engineer to understand and build almost any real-life system. We didn’t just discuss theoretical aspects of systems (which are pretty important btw) but also touched upon how real-world production systems use these concepts

Arpit has an amazing approach to make you tackle engineering problems - by taking you along on a thought journey from the fundamentals to practical real-world applications.

I joined the course looking to sharpen my engineering brainstorming and decision-making and the course did help me achieve that. There are a lot of opportunities to tackle fresh, open-ended design questions while being scrutinised by Arpit - these helped grow my with brainstorming and decision-making skills significantly.

If you’re considering this course to grow as an engineer, I would highly recommend this course. It might just turn out to be the best 8-weeks you’ve spent learning engineering.

As a mid level engineer, inching towards senior level, I always wondered about the process that sets one apart from the rest, in terms of technical expertise. To be brutally honest, we all know that in IT where majority of the work we perform on a daily basis, can be performed by any mid level engineer. Then, how do you create that difference in knowledge as you add more years to your experience?

This COHORT has showed me the path forward to create that difference. We deep dived about 30 systems in 8 weeks and it’s not these 30, but the comprehensive approach, minute implementation details and its application to seemingly very different systems, that created all the difference. And these sessions are not monologues, rather proper brainstorming session where we literally covered low level design decisions (storage/schema, communication protocols, concurrency controls, type of locking, etc) to micro optimisations (batching, connection pooling, indexing, etc) to high level architectures. Also, the focus is always towards designing for real systems which are cost efficient (one of the most important requirement for any company) and not some jazz which look complex.

Prototyping these systems (which Arpit will encourage you for, every hour of this cohort), will actually make you realise that it’s not that hard as we think. Personally, it also helped me understand the resources one needs to consume at different levels of experience/knowledge and THIS sets me on a path where I can keep growing my technical horizon. I literally had a time of my life attending this cohort. And I highly recommend this to anybody who is inclined towards understanding and designing complex distributed systems.

ProTip: Participate in brainstorming sessions. Prototype systems you are building. Utilise 1:1 sessions.

This is one of the best courses out there on system design. Arpit covers a wide range of system design topics and concepts in a very interactive manner. All these concepts are in turn also explained through design discussions on real time use cases.

It is not a usual course where someone is speaking and you are just listening, I loved the format of the course where you get to dive deep into all the concepts through interactive discussions. This course is highly recommended to working professionals who want an extra edge in growing their career as engineers/architects, it would definitely improve your approach on designing and implementing software solutions. Like Arpit said in his very first session - “approach is more important than the solution”. So if you want to become “Asli Engineer” this course is a must :).

I have been tired of the entire tech ecosystem online (especially in India) where so much focus is on interview prep and so little on improving one’s engineering skills. It is as if once you get a job, you will somehow automatically become better engineers and there is no effort and training required for that. Aprit’s course was a breath of fresh air. It sold the promise of becoming a better engineer instead of the boring goal of getting a job at a big fancy tech company. And boy, did it live up to its promise!

The course covers a large and diverse range of systems. Each system solves some real world problem that as software engineers, we will encounter in some form sooner or later. This implies that by the end of the course, you will be confident to tackle any engineering problem and design any arbitrary system. However, what makes the course truly special is its structure where its not like we have a preacher preaching us from the pulpit and we are passive recipients of knowledge. Rather, we are active participants in the discussion. As a part of the cohort, you will be actively thinking as Arpit throws a problem at you. You will be trying to come up with a design. You will evaluate the suggestions of your peers, forcing you to think critically. In this process of thinking and trying and failing, you will deepen your understanding. You will know exactly what will work and what will not and why. Compare this to watching system design videos on YouTube where you are just consuming information without thinking critically and applying yourself.

Since the course is well designed and structured, the amount of learning per unit of time spent in this course is extremely high. Arpit is the senior engineer that all of us want in our teams but few of us are lucky to have. His passion and love for engineering will rub off on you and your desire to become a better engineer will get stronger. You will pick up mental models that he uses to design systems.

As a co-incidence, in this course I also found an old friend with whom I had no contact for around eight years. Essentially, good things will start happening to you once you take this course :)

I thoroughly enjoyed the entire cohort and got to learn a ton in this journey. Best thing I want to appreciate Arpit for is the discipline in which the classes are carried out. The class starts right in time, it gives equal opportunity for everyone to contribute and he makes sure that all your questions are answered as well. He gives references to read more on what he speaks in the class.

One thing I noticed is for a given problem statement, you get the similar high level articles online but in most of the lectures, I saw a completely different and very simple twist to solve the same problem. And this is just using basic computer fundamentals.

I would just say, THANK YOU to Arpit for bringing this course to life. It takes a lot to learn things yourself and then spread the knowledge to others. Once again, Thank you. it is the best cohort out there on system design.

When I joined this course, I only had 1.5 years of industry experience and I was initially uncertain whether I would be able to comprehend the concepts. However, now I believe that choosing to take the course was the right decision. If you take the pre-reads for the class seriously and go through them beforehand, you will be able to gain a deep understanding of the concepts. The instructor, Arpit, takes questions after explaining the topics, and we always had stimulating brainstorming sessions, which made the topics more engaging.

If you enjoy discussing real-world problems and are eager to learn about the concepts behind the most commonly used applications, I would strongly recommend enrolling in this course.

Undoubtedly, my best investment till date. The way Arpit has designed this course is truly amazing. It’s not about designing some ad hoc systems but it’s about drafting a thought process that goes behind taking a critical design decisions backed with valid data points.

It’s amazing how he breaks down complex problem statements & eventually leads to scaling of the systems withholding simplicity with a correct rationale behind it. Every session in the cohort gets you to some newer concepts & eventually helping you become a good software engineer.

I would recommend the dedicated course is worth the investment. To deepen my understanding of HLD I opted for the course. I still remember my first call with Arpit, I have never met such a curious engineer in my complete career and was damn impressed when I saw his GitHub.

Arpit helped me in thinking of a bigger picture on an engineering scale. Core concepts with amazing discussion in a very lucid way. It literally has everything that I wanted to learn. The best thing about the course is that he digs deeper into those topics which we hardly find anywhere and the push he gives to each one of us in session motivates us to think beyond. I do miss Saturday and Sunday discussions with you :(

Thank you Arpit for the Amazing sessions. I have become a great fan of you due to your simplicity, depth of design knowledge, and teaching skills.

I had 7+ years of experience but never got the opportunity to build/work on systems myself. I joined Arpit’s class to learn Systems Design in general. It turned out to be whole new different experience.

It’s not just your regular system design definitions and interview cracking crash course. He focuses on cognitive thinking and the basics of building a system on your own.

He focuses on trying things out and talks about design in those terms only. It is how you would actually build a system from scratch which clears your fundamentals and let’s you question each decision to build an efficient system.

#Asli Engineering!! Definitely lived up to the hashtag!! When I came across this course, I really liked the syllabus and the way it focused on real life systems. Most of the material related to system design I found online was quite theoretical and left me wondering whether I would ever need it. However this course was different. It wasn’t a one way traffic. To me, it was almost like a fast-forward version of how that particular system must have been designed when it came into existence and what must have been the thought process of the engineers who built it. It was more of a discussion with Arpit doing the handholding if someone misses something and sharing terrific insights about real life systems. Not just the design discussions, but regular question-answering sessions also provided different perspectives about why that particular system should be designed in that fashion and also how things actually work in different companies. There were so many new platforms and systems that I hadn’t even heard of before I took this course.

Arpit has structured this course in a very optimal way, so that you always have something to take away from a session. Every week’s sessions left me wondering. How does this guy manage all this ?? and that too with such passion and energy!!

I highly recommend taking this course, especially for those who are at the start of their careers like me as you would also get to learn a lot from the senior folks as well who take this course. Also the learning curve would be extremely high.

PS: This course was the most productive thing I did in the last 7-8 weeks. My main take away from the course was most the systems that are extremely successful are quite simple and intuitive. It’s just that we as engineers should know how to approach a problem and ask the right questions. Arpit’s course focuses on that a lot!!

Being in the industry for six years, I had mostly worked in the data domain and had only surface knowledge of the system design components - especially from the application side. Though I am a reader and have read many blogs on system design, application designing and internals but never grasped the concepts so clearly until I joined this masterclass!

I was so grateful to be part of Arpit’s cohort and learned from him in many ways than one, his attention to details while designing systems, focusing on real systems and examples, scalability and also making sure all questions are answered before closing for the day.

Summarizing, I would say, it is a MUST DO COURSE FOR EVERY ENGINEER!!

Thanks Arpit for sharing your knowledge and inspiring so many people :)

Cohort sessions by Arpit are great. I especially like his ability of explaining things. He has the ability to make systems as simple as possible. I would be happy to attend such cohort sessions more(good way to spend weekends). I have already started implementing his learnings in my work. When you start understanding the systems to such granular level, you start enjoying the system design

Joining this cohort was the best thing I did. And believe me this is going to be very good investment for your learnings, you will not at all regret after enrolling this course. The sessions are designed in such a way that it inculcates a habit of thinking Why and How about everything in technology, which eventually widespread the thinking process and motivates to learn and explore more. Thanks a lot Arpit for sharing your learnings in such a nice way!!!

I got to know about Arpit and his course in late 2021 though one of my friend who already took his course but I signed up for May 2022 cohort, now after completing this course I wish I could have signed up early but its “Better late than never”.

To support my above statement, my opinion about this course:

1. It boosts your curiosity, which is very much needed if you are working in IT. For me it has not just added to my curiosity but multiplied.

2. You become very much aware and see things very differently which you have already read from your school, college time and using it daily. (*Mindset shift)

3. The course structure is very well designed from Fundamentals to designing highly scalable systems.

4. The brainstorming session throughout the course which is very much needed.

I would highly recommend this course to all the engineers out there if you really wanna ignite the #AsliEngineer in you. (Discord community, Cracking interviews, …, etc all are the bonus). Worth investing.

Thanks a ton Arpit for putting your great efforts to this course. :)

The lectures by Arpit, are explained thoroughly and reinforced through practical usecases. It’s best suited for developers that already know SQL and have some industry experience - Junior/Mid-level Backend engineers looking to move to Senior levels or experienced engineers looking to refresh knowledge. The lectures helped me to understand the DB internals. In-depth discussion of LSM-trees and how one can use the adhoc components built on LSM-trees & other databases is just mind blowing. Lectures are a guide on “How to optimize the application as well as DB performance in conjunction”. Emphasis on core concepts by Arpit will make entire system design like a game of ‘LEGO Building block’.

This course will make you love engineering again if you’re put-off by boring 9 to 5 job. I would describe the whole vibe of the course as a discussion with experienced engineer rather than a traditional structured academic course. The course is worth every penny you will ever invested.

“Your enthusiasm is contagious” - a fellow student said to Arpit on our last day of the cohort, and I couldn’t agree more.

• It goes beyond what’s just needed for interviews and tries to address difficult design choice questions

• The classes are well organised: They aren’t just a unidirectional flow of information. The students get to participate in brainstorming the problem statement, building them from scratch, and Arpit ensures to nudge us just enough to keep us on track, and more often than not, the students themselves only are able to come up with quite similar approach as Arpit later discusses. This is a really good quality of a teacher: not giving away the answer, but at the same time, making the students capable enough to arrive at the answers by themselves.

• No class ends with a student having some doubt: At the end of each class, there is an open discussion, where all doubts related to the topics discussed are clarified, and then only the class is concluded.

• What makes Arpit stand out from other instructors out there is that most of the content discussed in the classes, Arpit had first hand experience building similar systems in production. So, he is teaching from his practical experience.

• Recently, he announced system design video library: All the best discussions for each problem statement would be updated here and all the new problem statements covered in the future batches will also be made available to all the students who had enrolled in any cohort. Life-long learning, what else can one ask for

• One major learning was: We always think too ahead and complicate things. Repeatedly throughout the course, just how starting simple and iterating over it with common sense leads to good robust designs instills a lot of confidence in students, making them realise designing system is no rocket science, its just taking one step at a time, and being aware of the already available solutions out there and building on top of them.

• And finally, like I mentioned in the beginning, apart from just the content of the course, there’s a lot more to it: I’ll highly recommend another fellow engineer just to be part of the discussions: the enthusiasm with which Arpit discusses in all the classes is something to witness. It takes you back to the point of thinking why all of us got started with software engineering in the first place: to get the sheer joy of building things. Down the line, its very normal to lose motivation or not feel as enthusiastic as we were when we were fresh out of college. Its really one of an experience to witness Arpit’s enthusiasm in all these classes, how he has sustained it for so long over these years, and if you look closer, it’ll tell you the BTS of making of a great engineer, what sets a great engineer apart from others: because of their ability to find pleasure and being hungry for more always.

Arpit’s cohort is the answer for everyone who want to genuinely learn(or grow their knowledge of) how to design highly scalable & resilient systems, not just how to crack system design interviews.

Arpits’s approach of problem solving, starting from the ground up, asking “WHY” for every design choice, big or small. Arpit makes you think of that one remote performance improvement scenario and it’s this attention to detail, that makes Arpit’s cohort truly unique and informative.

Couple the above with the cohort’s diverse thought processes and experiences, and you get yourself a fabulous learning environment. I cannot remember one session post which I didn’t have any new takeaways/learnings.

The cohort has been the best part about my weekends, and I definitely recommend it to everyone!

What you get - Amazing Mentor, Great discussions/Brainstorming sessions & #AsliEngineering concepts!

I have been a part of Arpit’s system design masterclass and I must say, it has been a fantastic learning experience. The course content had great depth and covered topics that are often not talked about in other online resources. Arpit not only focused on the theoretical aspects of system design but also the practical nitty-gritty details of implementing such systems in real life. He also discusses often overlooked components like load balancers, in-memory KV stores, different kinds of databases, etc. in tremendous detail.

The course covers fantastic real-life case studies that help better understand how systems are implemented in the real world. The live interaction and discussions with Arpit and other students were one of the most valuable parts of the course. These discussions encouraged you to dig deep into concepts and also provided interesting ideas and perspectives from other students.

Arpit has been an amazing instructor and mentor who’s always extremely patient in listening to everyone’s opinions and questions. He took the time to ensure that everyone’s doubts were cleared and always pointed to further readings and things we could explore. The course also includes great career advice sprinkled throughout each session.

Overall, I highly recommend Arpit’s system design course. I now feel a lot more confident and have a much clearer view of things I want to explore more as I move forward.

Arpit’s initiative is unique in nature, which helped me in many ways

1. Streamlined my design concepts, and developed an intuition for different design problems.

2. Design brainstorming helped me to learn, sometimes instead of jumping into a solution of a presented problem, taking a step back and probing about why to even solve that problem, and finding an alternative non-intuitive route , could simply design and life.

3. The insights for the design problems , also is helping me question the design discussion at work, helped me grow my stakes.

4. Helped me increase my focus, because every design decision is a base of next one, and you cannot loose focus.

5. Arpit makes you believe to implement the system locally, this helped me to wire those solutions in brain, and helping me to evaluate and dig into those solutions when facing real life scale/non-scale production problems.

6. Lastly , its fun being a asli engineer.

Kudos to you Aprit.