CF

Pragmatic System Design

4h 28m 50s
English
Paid
Updated September 2026

Pragmatic System Design is a 85-lesson 4 hours 28 minutes self-paced course by Udemy. Most engineers rarely design systems from scratch on the job, yet system design interviews suddenly expect everyone to be fluent at it.

Course facts

Lessons
85
Duration
4 hours 28 minutes
Level
All levels
Language
English
Updated
2026-09-11
Instructor
Udemy
Price
Premium

Most engineers rarely design systems from scratch on the job, yet system design interviews suddenly expect everyone to be fluent at it. This course is built around that mismatch: it covers the core topics interviewers ask about, along with one engineer's approach to answering them.

Two ways to use the course

  • Start to finish if you have time; the material builds your confidence incrementally
  • Jump straight to design videos if you're short on time, with linked background material for any topic you're not familiar with

The framing throughout is that interviewers are really testing breadth of knowledge first and depth second, so the theory sections stay brief and practical.

An honest note on design itself

No system design is perfect. Every design involves tradeoffs shaped by the designer's own experience. The course presents its approaches as a set of ideas to draw from, not a fixed formula to memorize.

Who teaches Pragmatic System Design? Udemy

Udemy thumbnail

Udemy is the largest open marketplace for online courses on the internet. Founded in 2010 by Eren Bali, Oktay Caglar, and Gagan Biyani and headquartered in San Francisco, the company went public on the Nasdaq in 2021 under the ticker UDMY. The platform hosts well over two hundred thousand courses across software development, IT and cloud, data science, design, business, marketing, and creative skills, taught by tens of thousands of independent instructors. Roughly seventy million learners use it worldwide, and the corporate arm — Udemy Business — supplies a curated subset of that catalog to enterprise customers.

Because Udemy is a marketplace rather than a single editorial publisher, the catalog is uneven by design. The strongest material lives in the long-form, project-based courses authored by working engineers — full-stack JavaScript, React, Node.js, Python data science, AWS, Docker and Kubernetes, mobile development with Flutter and React Native, and cloud certification preparation. The CourseFlix listing under this source is the slice of that catalog that has been mirrored here for offline-friendly viewing, organized by topic and updated as new releases land. Pricing on Udemy itself swings dramatically with the site's near-permanent sales, which is why the platform is best treated as a deep reference catalog: pick instructors with strong reviews and a track record of updating their material rather than buying on the headline price alone.

What lessons are included in Pragmatic System Design?

This is a demo lesson (10:00 remaining)

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#1: Introduction to Pragmatic System Design
All Course Lessons (85)
#Lesson TitleDurationAccess
1
Introduction to Pragmatic System Design Demo
03:50
2
Diagram building blocks
02:31
3
Diagram flow
01:11
4
Making Estimates
03:28
5
Load Balancing
05:53
6
CDN
04:19
7
Introduction
01:46
8
Caching Strategies
03:12
9
Eviction Policies
03:23
10
Redis
03:58
11
Introduction
04:32
12
Messaging
02:29
13
RabbitMQ
05:09
14
Kafka
03:57
15
TCP
04:03
16
UDP
03:09
17
Summary: TCP vs UDP
00:56
18
HTTP
01:05
19
HTTP - Methods
01:56
20
HTTP - Status Codes
02:36
21
REST
01:14
22
RESTfulness
03:30
23
WebSockets
03:36
24
Long Polling
02:54
25
gRPC
04:13
26
GraphQL
04:54
27
Summary
01:58
28
Concurrency vs Parallelism
02:29
29
Processes
06:40
30
Threads
03:52
31
Thread Pools
01:17
32
Indexes
07:09
33
Sharding
10:25
34
Consistent Hashing
03:59
35
Partitioning
10:29
36
CAP Theorem
04:36
37
ACID transactions
04:53
38
Web Sessions
05:35
39
Problem Introduction - Design a Taxi Hailing App
05:34
40
Driver Locations
04:40
41
Storing Locations
03:54
42
Taxis Around You
05:06
43
Matching
03:29
44
Summary - Design a Taxi Hailing App
00:49
45
Problem Introduction - Design a Chat
01:37
46
Basic Design
03:25
47
Scaling Reads
02:11
48
Sharding Chat Messages
02:00
49
Scaling chat using queues
02:18
50
Summary - Design a Chat
01:25
51
Problem Introduction - Design a Web Crawler
02:30
52
Basic Design
02:13
53
Fetching Content
03:00
54
What's a "new" URL?
03:12
55
Uniqueness
04:14
56
Priorities
05:41
57
Summary - Design a Web Crawler
01:06
58
Problem Introduction - Design an Auction
01:47
59
Basic Design for an Auction
02:15
60
Optimistic Locking of Bids
01:45
61
Serialisation of Bids
02:08
62
Event-Driven Approach for Bids
02:55
63
Scaling an Auction
01:42
64
Summary - Design an Auction
00:53
65
Problem Introduction - Design a URL Shortener
01:23
66
Basic Design for a URL Shortener
01:59
67
Short Identifiers
02:48
68
Scaling Reads
02:27
69
Extra: DynamoDB
01:06
70
Caching
02:03
71
Summary - Design a URL Shortener
01:09
72
Problem Introduction
01:42
73
Basic Design
04:38
74
Concurrency
04:46
75
Scalability
04:54
76
Summary
01:01
77
Extra: Scaling Using Queues
02:13
78
Problem Introduction - News Feed
02:13
79
Basic Design - News Feed
02:05
80
Storage Calculations - News Feed
01:17
81
Scaling reads
03:48
82
Long Term Storage and Short Term Storage
02:23
83
Feed Optimisation
01:26
84
VIPs
03:15
85
Summary - News Feed
01:19
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Frequently asked questions

What are the prerequisites for enrolling in the Pragmatic System Design course?
The course is designed for individuals preparing for system design interviews and for senior engineers seeking alternative perspectives on system design. While no specific prerequisites are mentioned, having a foundational understanding of software engineering and familiarity with system components such as databases and network protocols would be beneficial.
What kind of projects will I work on during the course?
The course includes practical exercises such as designing a taxi hailing app, a chat application, a web crawler, and an auction system. These projects aim to provide hands-on experience with real-world system design challenges, covering aspects like scaling, sharding, and caching strategies.
Who is the target audience for this course?
The course is targeted at individuals preparing for system design interviews and senior engineers looking to gain new insights into system architecture. It is particularly useful for engineers in roles where system design is not frequently discussed but is essential for technical interviews.
How does the depth of this course compare to other system design courses?
This course focuses on breadth first, then depth, keeping theoretical aspects brief to reflect typical system design interviews. It offers a pragmatic approach, emphasizing practical application and real-world scenarios like load balancing, caching strategies, and messaging systems using tools like Redis, RabbitMQ, and Kafka.
What specific tools and platforms are covered in the course?
Throughout the course, you will explore and utilize tools and platforms such as Redis for caching, RabbitMQ and Kafka for messaging, and various HTTP and WebSocket protocols. The course also delves into database concepts like sharding and consistent hashing.
What topics are not covered in the Pragmatic System Design course?
The course does not cover advanced theoretical concepts in-depth or focus on specific programming languages. It is centered around practical system design challenges and solutions rather than exhaustive coverage of each topic.
What is the estimated time commitment for completing the course?
The course consists of 85 lessons, providing flexibility in how you approach it. A comprehensive approach involves watching all videos sequentially, while a focused approach allows you to skip to system design topics of interest, particularly if you are short on time or not actively preparing for interviews.