Motivation Parkinson’s law states that “work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion”. This means that given any problem, we tend to take as much time that is allocated to it to complete it. If we allocate less time to work, we tend to complete it by…

What are the core ideas in Computer System Design? — Introduction In this blog, we discuss the basic building blocks of a distributed system. We also discuss the challenges of designing distributed systems. In the end, we discuss an application of the building blocks in building a typical website selling products. …

Building the mindset of a monk. — Moments of pleasure, moments of strife, Filled with joy and pain is the nature of life. Be Buddha, peaceful in success and loss, Exist in calmness, neither happy nor cross. Uncertainty is fundamental to human life. Our lives are fundamentally uncertain. We do not know what the next moment holds for us. The body we inhabit…

What Is Proof-Of-Stake? Introduction In the previous blog posts, we discussed the fundamentals of blockchain and Proof-Of-Work which was first used by Satoshi Nakamoto and is widely used on the Bitcoin blockchain. For the scope of this blog post, I wanted to focus on another consensus algorithm — Proof-Of-Stake. The fundamental…

How does the Bitcoin Blockchain verify transactions? — Pre-Read Before I begin, I loved this YouTube video to understand the Consensus Mechanism used by the Blockchain network. In my previous blog post, I discussed the basics of Bitcoin Fundamentals. What is Consensus? In general terms, a consensus is a form of agreement between a group of independent entities in a network. So…

How to design an application with Microservices? — Introduction The Microservice Architecture is a design paradigm where a large complex application is broken down into a suite of small function component services that have the following characteristics: Loosely coupled Highly maintainable and testable Independently developed, deployed, and maintained Organized around business capabilities Owned by a small team

System design question for FAANG comapanies. — Are you interested in learning how the design of search engines works on popular website sites such as Amazon, Medium, and Wikipedia? This blog post discusses the design and implementation of an Auto-Complete search engine from scratch. Functional Requirements The system should be able to satisfy the following functional requirements: Search for…

This blog post discusses two topics: Blockchain and Smart Contracts. This will be fun in detail. Terminologies Before we understand the fundamentals of Blockchain and Smart Contracts, let us understand some of the common terminologies used. Understandably, some terms such as Merkle Trees, Proof-Of-Stake, and Proof-Of-Work systems will require separate blog…

A four-step framework for becoming more productive at work. — Motivation We live in a world of social networks, smartphone applications, and the ever-increasing set of notifications from them. Furthermore, coupling them with the messiness of our everyday lives, the vagaries of the pandemic, weather, health, etc., life starts to feel overwhelming. …