Public curriculum

What comes after
the foundations.

Eighteen planned field guides connect API contracts and durable data to distributed systems and real-time delivery. A topic becomes a lesson only after it is complete and reviewed.

TopicSystem focusStatus

Stage 1 · API contracts and durable data

Resource-Oriented API DesignDesign APIs from domain behavior before choosing endpoint shapes.Available: Payment endpoint case study

REST · OpenAPIPlanned

Durable Data and TransactionsReason from storage guarantees to application correctness.Available: Payment transaction case study

PostgreSQL · transactionsPlanned

Caching as Controlled StalenessTreat every cache as an explicit staleness budget.

Redis · cachingPlanned

Deferred Work and Job QueuesMove work off the request path without losing delivery semantics.Available: Reliable jobs case study

queues · workersPlanned

Search Beyond SQL LIKEUnderstand what a search engine stores before tuning relevance.

Elasticsearch · searchPlanned

Stage 2 · Reliability and service operations

Failure Semantics and ResilienceDesign the failure path before production designs it for you.Available: Retry and outage exercise

resilience · retriesPlanned

Service-to-Service ContractsChoose a protocol by coupling and delivery needs.

gRPC · microservicesPlanned

Configuration as a Runtime ContractMake invalid configuration fail before traffic arrives.

configuration · secretsPlanned

Observability from Signals to DecisionsStart with debugging questions and derive the telemetry you need.Available: Request tracing case study

OpenTelemetry · loggingPlanned

Graceful Lifecycle ManagementTreat process lifecycle as part of request correctness.

shutdown · KubernetesPlanned

Stage 3 · Security, scale, and delivery

Backend Security by Trust BoundarySecure transitions between trust zones instead of memorizing vulnerability names.

security · OWASPPlanned

Scaling the Request PathFind the bottleneck before adding machines.Available: Reproducible query measurement

scaling · performancePlanned

Scaling Data and StateScale state without losing the invariants that make it useful.

sharding · replicationPlanned

Concurrency, Parallelism, and BackpressureMatch the execution model to the work and its capacity limit.

concurrency · event loopPlanned

Containers and Delivery SystemsMake a release reproducible before making it frequent.

Docker · KubernetesPlanned

Tests as Executable BoundariesChoose tests by the boundary that can fail.Available: Executable failure tests

testing · contractsPlanned

Messaging and Event StreamsSeparate message transport from the business guarantee you need.

Kafka · messagingPlanned

Real-Time ConnectionsDesign the connection lifecycle, not only the happy-path message.

WebSockets · SSEPlanned