Day 59 posts: LinkedIn and X

The angle is the honesty of revising what you can’t explain, not what you already know. Swap in your own voice.

Day 59 of 60 days of system design. The least glamorous day, and one of the most useful. No new material. I just rated myself honestly across all eight weeks and spent the day on the three topics that were still shaky.

Here is the trap of a revision day: rereading. You open an old page, the words look familiar, you nod, you feel ready, and you have learned nothing. Recognising is not knowing.

So I did the opposite. For each topic I closed the page and tried to explain it out loud, to an imaginary beginner, from memory. Explain why a B-tree hates random writes. Explain why p99 matters more than the average. Explain fan-out on write versus read. Where my explanation stumbled, where I reached for a word and it was not there, that was a real gap, and that is where the day went.

This is why every day of this course has ended with writing a post. Explaining a thing to strangers is the fastest way to find the hole in your understanding. I have been doing it for 59 days, and today I did it one more time, deliberately, on my weakest spots.

The honest grid matters because a 3 out of 5, “I sort of get it,” is a gap, not a pass. An interviewer does not accept hand-waving, and neither should you when grading yourself.

Three things I could not explain cleanly this morning, I can explain tonight. That is the only measure of a review day that counts.

Tomorrow: day 60. The finish.

Code and notes: github.com/anurag629/system-design-60-days

#systemdesign #learning #learninginpublic

X thread

Day 59 of 60 days of system design. Least glamorous day, one of the most useful.

No new material. Rated myself honestly across all 8 weeks, spent the day on the 3 topics still shaky.

The trap of a revision day: rereading. Old page looks familiar, you nod, you feel ready, you learned nothing.

Recognising is not knowing.

So I did the opposite. Closed the page, explained each topic out loud from memory to an imaginary beginner.

Where I reached for a word and it wasn’t there = a real gap. That’s where the day went.

This is why every day ended with writing a post. Explaining to strangers is the fastest way to find the hole.

A 3/5, “I sort of get it,” is a gap, not a pass. Grade yourself like an interviewer would.

Three things I couldn’t explain this morning, I can explain tonight. Only measure of a review day that counts.

Tomorrow: day 60. The finish.

Code: github.com/anurag629/system-design-60-days