Get the latest tech news
Elements of System Design
A Periodic Table of System Design Principles. Contribute to jarulraj/periodic-table development by creating an account on GitHub.
The aim is to surface structure that already exists in computer systems, so that students can form a more coherent mental map, researchers can situate contributions with precision, and practitioners can discuss design choices across domains with greater clarity. We emphasise design intent rather than prescribing mechanisms: instead of “use this locking protocol” or “optimise this query plan,” the principles state aims such as “preserve correctness under concurrency” or “prioritise the common case,” leaving concrete realisations to specific domains. Design a single core with explicit variation points like types, knobs, or plug-ins, so that it can serve many use cases without duplication, but specialise when doing so yields meaningful gains in performance, accuracy, or clarity.
Or read this on Hacker News
