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Learning path

Distributed Systems

Implement the algorithms behind Cassandra, Kafka, Zookeeper, and Bitcoin — consistent hashing, gossip, Raft consensus, blockchain, distributed logs.

mixed9 courses107 lessons~27 hoursFree
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Course sequence

  1. 01

    Build Consistent Hashing

    Not started

    Build the consistent hashing ring used by Memcached, Cassandra, DynamoDB, and CDNs. Implement the basic ring, virtual nodes, weighted distribution, replication, and the alternative rendezvous hashing.

    intermediate11 lessons~3h
  2. 02

    Build a Gossip Protocol

    Not started

    Build the epidemic protocol used by Consul, Cassandra, DynamoDB, and Bitcoin. Implement membership tracking, anti-entropy, SWIM-style failure detection, phi-accrual, and convergence analysis. The foundation of every decentralized cluster coordinator.

    intermediate8 lessons~2h
  3. 03

    Build a Rate Limiter

    Not started

    Build production-grade rate limiters: fixed window, sliding window, token bucket, leaky bucket. Then make them distributed (via Redis) and tiered (per-IP, per-user, per-plan). Used by every API gateway, web server, and microservice.

    intermediate8 lessons~2h
  4. 04

    Build a Service Discovery System

    Not started

    Build the registry behind Consul, Eureka, and Kubernetes service discovery: registration with TTLs, tags + metadata, health checks, load-balanced lookup, replicated HA, and the Kubernetes/service-mesh patterns. Used by every microservice architecture.

    intermediate10 lessons~3h
  5. 05

    Build Your Own Load Balancer

    Not started

    Build a production-grade L7 load balancer from scratch. You'll implement round-robin, weighted, and least-connection selection; active and passive health checks; circuit breakers; consistent hashing; sticky sessions; rate limiting; TLS termination (SNI); and Prometheus metrics. By the end you'll deeply understand what NGINX, HAProxy, Envoy, and AWS ALB actually do.

    intermediate17 lessons~4h
  6. 06

    Build a Blockchain from Scratch

    Not started

    Build a working blockchain: blocks with prev-hash linking, Merkle trees with proofs, proof-of-work mining with difficulty adjustment, UTXO transactions, double-spend defense, and consensus alternatives (PoS, BFT). The data structure + cryptography behind Bitcoin, Ethereum, and every cryptocurrency.

    advanced17 lessons~4h
  7. 07

    Build a Raft KV Store

    Not started

    Implement the Raft consensus algorithm: leader election, log replication, log consistency, snapshots, membership changes, linearizable reads. The protocol behind etcd, Consul, CockroachDB, and TiKV — every modern distributed coordinator.

    advanced12 lessons~3h
  8. 08

    Build Kafka

    Not started

    Build a Kafka-style log: append-only segmented storage, partitions for parallelism, leader-follower replication with ISR, producers with batching/idempotency/transactions, consumer groups with rebalancing, exactly-once semantics, monitoring.

    advanced14 lessons~4h
  9. 09

    Build a Log Aggregator

    Not started

    Build a Loki/Splunk-style log aggregator: ingest log lines via HTTP, structure them into label-keyed streams, store as compressed chunks, query by label + substring/regex (LogQL-style), aggregate over time, manage retention, and alert on thresholds. The observability stack every team eventually builds.

    advanced10 lessons~3h

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Distributed Systems