System Design Interview Books: Volume 1 vs Volume 2

What’s the difference between volume 1 and volume 2? Shall I read volume 1 first before reading volume 2? This short post aims to answer those questions. 

Volume 1 and volume 2 cover a different set of system design interview questions and solutions. Although reading Volume 1 is helpful, it is not required. 

Stats:

Volume 1: 16 chapters, 320 pages, 6x9 inch paper

Volume 2: 13 chapters, 434 pages, 7x10 inch paper 

Things to consider before you buy:

• What topics are you interested in?

• Volume 1 focuses more on the fundamentals. It is more beginner-friendly.

• Volume 2 focuses more on identifying bottlenecks and discussing design trade-offs. It’s beginner-friendly. But since it covers more advanced topics, experienced developers are likely to learn more from volume 2.

Table of content for volume 1:

Chapter 1: Scale From Zero To Millions Of Users

Chapter 2: Back-of-the-envelope Estimation

Chapter 3: A Framework For System Design Interviews

Chapter 4: Design A Rate Limiter

Chapter 5: Design Consistent Hashing

Chapter 6: Design A Key-value Store

Chapter 7: Design A Unique Id Generator In Distributed Systems

Chapter 8: Design A Url Shortener

Chapter 9: Design A Web Crawler

Chapter 10: Design A Notification System

Chapter 11: Design A News Feed System

Chapter 12: Design A Chat System

Chapter 13: Design A Search Autocomplete System

Chapter 14: Design Youtube

Chapter 15: Design Google Drive

Chapter 16: The Learning Continues

Table of content for volume 2:

Chapter 1: Proximity Service

Chapter 2: Nearby Friends

Chapter 3: Google Maps

Chapter 4: Distributed Message Queue

Chapter 5: Metrics Monitoring

Chapter 6: Ad Click Event Aggregation

Chapter 7: Hotel Reservation

Chapter 8: Distributed Email Service

Chapter 9: S3-like Object Storage

Chapter 10: Real-time Gaming Leaderboard

Chapter 11: Payment System

Chapter 12: Digital Wallet

Chapter 13: Stock Exchange