See the system
Make the important pieces and their relationships visible.
Interactive course · intermediate
Application Architecture
Learn how to design and scale software applications from simple three-tier architectures to multiple backend services.
- Length
- 64 minutes
- Lessons
- 6 lessons
- Format
- Interactive
INTERACTIVE COURSE · 6 lessonsApplication Architecture
For people building products with AI who want a practical mental model they can use.
WHAT CHANGES
Turn a complex system into something you can reason about.
For people building products with AI who want a practical mental model they can use.
Make a decision
Use the model inside a realistic product or technical trade-off.
Explain the why
Leave with language you can use with product, design, and engineering teammates.
COURSE CURRICULUM
Short lessons. One connected mental model.
Each lesson makes one part of the system visible, then asks you to make a decision inside it.
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- 01INTERACTIVE LESSON11 MIN
The Three-Tier System
The client, server, and database in a typical web app, and how requests move between them.
- 02INTERACTIVE LESSON10 MIN
Modeling the Data
Tables, primary and foreign keys, and why related data is split apart and joined.
- 03INTERACTIVE LESSON15 MIN
Scaling Under Load
Scale up, scale out, cache repeated reads, and queue work during traffic spikes.
- 04INTERACTIVE LESSON9 MIN
Growing the System Out
A monolith splits into services, ships as containers, and scales each domain on its own.
- 05INTERACTIVE LESSON14 MIN
Your Turn: Take It Global
Model, build, and scale a URL shortener as new bottlenecks appear.
- 06INTERACTIVE LESSON5 MIN
In the Wild: A Production Deployment
A cloud deployment spread across zones, with load-balanced servers and a read replica.
START FREE
Build a useful mental model in 64 minutes.
Try the first interactive lesson without an account or a credit card.