ByteByteGo System Design Fundamentals: study plan and how long it takes
The ByteByteGo playlist is 104 videos and 9.8 hours long. Here's how long it takes at different paces, a week-by-week schedule built from the real videos, and a planner that turns it into your own daily plan.
104 videos · 9.8 hours · ByteByteGo
ByteByteGo's System Design Fundamentals playlist collects short animated explainers on the building blocks of modern systems: storage and memory, Kubernetes, bare metal vs virtual machines, API architectures, webhooks, Kafka vs RabbitMQ, Redis, garbage collection, Netflix's architecture and much more.
Videos are usually five to ten minutes, which makes it easy to learn one concept a day.
Who it's for: Engineers who want quick, visual explanations of system design concepts, alongside interview preparation.
How long does it take?
The full playlist is 9.8 hours across 104 videos. Here's roughly how many days that is at different daily watch times and speeds, counting video time only:
| Daily time | At 1x | At 1.5x | At 2x |
|---|---|---|---|
| 30 min a day | 20 days | 14 days | 10 days |
| 1 h a day | 10 days | 7 days | 5 days |
| 2 h a day | 5 days | 4 days | 3 days |
Make your own schedule
The playlist link is already filled in. Press Plan, set how much time you have each day and your speed, and you'll get a day-by-day schedule with a finish date and a calendar file. It reads the live playlist, so new videos are included.
Week-by-week schedule
A sample plan at 1 hour a day and normal speed, using whole videos so none is split across days. That's 2 weeks in total. For a different pace, start date or speed, use the planner above.
Week 1Videos 1–74 · 6h 36m
Day 1 · 59m
- 110+ Key Memory & Storage Systems: Crash Course System Design #54m
- 2Everything You Need to Know About DNS: Crash Course System Design #46m
- 3Latency Numbers Programmer Should Know: Crash Course System Design #16m
- 4What Is REST API? Examples And How To Use It: Crash Course System Design #35m
- 510 Key Data Structures We Use Every Day9m
- 6Cache Systems Every Developer Should Know6m
- 7The Most Beloved Burger for Developers3m
- 8But What Is Cloud Native Really All About?8m
- 9Debugging Like A Pro6m
- 10Top 5 Redis Use Cases6m
Day 2 · 57m
- 11CI/CD In 5 Minutes | Is It Worth The Hassle: Crash Course System Design #26m
- 12Kubernetes Explained in 6 Minutes | k8s Architecture6m
- 13CAP Theorem Simplified6m
- 14What is OSI Model | Real World Examples5m
- 15What Is A CDN? How Does It Work?4m
- 16What is RPC? gRPC Introduction.6m
- 17What Is GraphQL? REST vs. GraphQL5m
- 18What is API Gateway?3m
- 19Proxy vs Reverse Proxy (Real-world Examples)5m
- 20What Are Microservices Really All About? (And When Not To Use It)5m
- 21System Design: Why is Kafka fast?5m
Day 3 · 57m
- 22System Design: How to store passwords in the database?4m
- 23Big Misconceptions about Bare Metal, Virtual Machines, and Containers7m
- 24HTTP/1 to HTTP/2 to HTTP/34m
- 25System Design: Why is single-threaded Redis so fast?4m
- 26Top 7 Most-Used Distributed System Patterns6m
- 27Secret To Optimizing SQL Queries - Understand The SQL Execution Order6m
- 28Amazon Prime Video Ditches AWS Serverless, Saves 90%4m
- 29Top 6 Most Popular API Architecture Styles4m
- 30Top 5 Most-Used Deployment Strategies10m
- 31How Discord Stores TRILLIONS of Messages7m
Day 4 · 59m
- 32Uncovering Stack Overflow's Shocking Architecture4m
- 33OAuth 2 Explained In Simple Terms5m
- 34Demystifying the Unusual Evolution of the Netflix API Architecture4m
- 351 Year Of YouTube | Best System Design Series1m
- 36DevOps vs SRE vs Platform Engineering | Clear Big Misconceptions5m
- 37Top 7 Ways to 10x Your API Performance6m
- 38Why Google and Meta Put Billion Lines of Code In 1 Repository?7m
- 39Git MERGE vs REBASE: Everything You Need to Know5m
- 40Top 6 Load Balancing Algorithms Every Developer Should Know5m
- 41System Design: Apache Kafka In 3 Minutes4m
- 42Software Engineer Promo is SUPER easy - DO THIS4m
- 43Is Docker Still Relevant?4m
- 44HTTP Status Codes Explained In 5 Minutes5m
Day 5 · 55m
- 45Python Vs C++ Vs Java!5m
- 46How Big Tech Ships Code to Production4m
- 47How Git Works: Explained in 4 Minutes4m
- 48Why is JWT popular?5m
- 49How Does Linux Boot Process Work?5m
- 50Vertical Vs Horizontal Scaling: Key Differences You Should Know5m
- 51Top 9 Most Popular Types of API Testing4m
- 52Everything You NEED to Know About Client Architecture Patterns6m
- 53Linux File System Explained!5m
- 54How Disney Hotstar Captures One Billion Emojis!5m
- 55Top 6 Tools to Turn Code into Beautiful Diagrams3m
- 56Top 3 Things You Should Know About Webhooks!4m
Day 6 · 56m
- 57Caching Pitfalls Every Developer Should Know7m
- 58Reverse Proxy vs API Gateway vs Load Balancer3m
- 59System Design: Why is Kafka so Popular?4m
- 60ACID Properties in Databases With Examples5m
- 61Top 12 Tips For API Security10m
- 62Top 9 Must-Read Blogs for Engineers6m
- 63Top 9 Most Popular API Protocols4m
- 64Do You Know How Mobile Apps Are Released?5m
- 65KISS, SOLID, CAP, BASE: Important Terms You Might Not Know!7m
- 66What is Data Pipeline? | Why Is It So Popular?5m
Day 7 · 54m
- 67Kafka vs. RabbitMQ vs. Messaging Middleware vs. Pulsar5m
- 687 Must-know Strategies to Scale Your Database9m
- 69Concurrency Vs Parallelism!4m
- 70Linux Crash Course - Understanding File Permissions5m
- 71Session Vs JWT: The Differences You May Not Know!7m
- 7225 Computer Papers You Should Read!9m
- 73Linux Performance Tools!7m
- 74How the Internet Works in 9 Minutes9m
Week 2Videos 75–104 · 3h 9m
Day 8 · 55m
- 75HTTP 1 Vs HTTP 2 Vs HTTP 3!8m
- 76How Search Really Works9m
- 77Top Kafka Use Cases You Should Know6m
- 78Why is Kubernetes Popular | What is Kubernetes?10m
- 79Scalability Simply Explained in 10 Minutes9m
- 80Everything You NEED to KNOW About Web Applications3m
- 81How SSH Really Works4m
- 82Big-O Notation in 3 Minutes3m
- 83API Pagination: Making Billions of Products Scrolling Possible3m
Day 9 · 56m
- 84Apache Kafka Fundamentals You Should Know5m
- 858 Most Important System Design Concepts You Should Know6m
- 86API Vs SDK! What's the difference?5m
- 87What is a LOAD BALANCER really about?7m
- 88System Design: Why Is Docker Important?4m
- 89How the Garbage Collector Works in Java, Python, and Go!5m
- 908 Most Important Tips for Designing Fault-Tolerant System5m
- 91Top 6 Most Popular API Architecture Styles1m
- 92System Design Was HARD - Until You Knew the Trade-Offs5m
- 93System Design Was HARD - Until You Knew the Trade-Offs, Part 26m
- 94APIs Explained in 6 Minutes!7m
Day 10 · 59m
- 95Trillions of Web Pages: Where Does Google Store Them?9m
- 967 System Design Concepts Explained in 10 Minutes11m
- 9720 System Design Concepts You Must Know - Final Part9m
- 98System Design Interview – BIGGEST Mistakes to Avoid7m
- 99System Design: Why is Kafka Popular?8m
- 100What Is Redis Really About? Why Is It So Popular?9m
- 101What is a Data Lakehouse?7m
Day 11 · 18m
- 102HTTP vs HTTPS Explained7m
- 103How the JVM Actually Works7m
- 104How to Test Your Code (Even When AI Writes It)4m
Tips for finishing
- Use a short daily time (20 to 30 minutes) and treat it as a daily concept habit rather than a course to binge.
- Keep notes on each concept; together they make a great system design revision sheet.