09 October 2006

Alex Xu - Collected Quotes

"A design without bottlenecks isn’t challenging and interesting." (Alex Xu, "System Design Interview: An insider's guide", 2017)

"Nonsensical design is usually a result of not thinking through step by step thoroughly. Take a moment to make sure your diagram provides the right level of details for clarity." (Alex Xu, "System Design Interview: An insider's guide", 2017)

"Over-engineering is a real disease of many engineers as they delight in design purity and ignore tradeoffs." (Alex Xu, "System Design Interview: An insider's guide", 2017)

"System design is about understanding the problem you’re trying to solve before coming up with a solution. It is not about coming up with a solution and finding a problem to fit into that solution." (Alex Xu, "System Design Interview: An insider's guide", 2017)

"Systems and users don’t al- ways behave the way you expect, and unexpected behaviors may lead to system failures, resulting in poor user experience." (Alex Xu, "System Design Interview: An insider's guide", 2017)

"Technical knowledge is only impressive if you’re able to apply it to justify a chosen design." (Alex Xu, "System Design Interview: An insider's guide", 2017)

"The high-level diagram design aims to set up the foundations for the design and give clarity […] on which parts are important to have to achieve the requirements. […] The objective of the high-level diagram design is to get a flow diagram […] as the baseline for further discussions." (Alex Xu, "System Design Interview: An insider's guide", 2017)

"The purpose of requirement gathering is to test your ability to clarify an open-ended and ambiguous problem statement." (Alex Xu, "System Design Interview: An insider's guide", 2017)

"When faced with a problem, our suggestion is to brainstorm a couple of options and think through the pros and cons with respect to the design requirements. Don’t generically discuss the pros and cons, but focus on what the end-users would experience based on your suggested solution." (Alex Xu, "System Design Interview: An insider's guide", 2017)

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