Archive - Level Up Coding System Design Newsletter

API Architecture Styles Made Simple

(6 Minutes) | How Each Works, When to Use Each (and When Not to), Benefits, and Tradeoffs

Dec 26, 2025 • Nikki Siapno

Pub/Sub Clearly Explained (in Under 6 Minutes)

(6 Minutes) | How It Works, Best Practices, Why Teams Reach for It, When Not to Use It, and Tradeoffs

Dec 19, 2025 • Nikki Siapno

Connection Pooling Clearly Explained

(6 Minutes) | The Problem, How Pooling Works, Benefits vs Tradeoffs, and The Sweet Spot

Dec 17, 2025 • Nikki Siapno

Consistent Hashing Clearly Explained

(6 Minutes) | How It Works, Why It Matters, and When Not to Use It

Dec 14, 2025 • Nikki Siapno

How Rate Limiting Prevents Outages Before They Happen

(5 Minutes) | What Breaks Without Limits, Solutions, Best Practices, Risks, and Trade-Offs

Dec 11, 2025 • Nikki Siapno

(5 Minutes) | How Each Works, The Core Trade-Off, When to Use Each (and When Not to)

Dec 7, 2025 • Nikki Siapno

Health Checks vs Heartbeats

(4 Minutes) | What They Do, When to Use Each, and How They Work Together in Real Systems

Dec 4, 2025 • Nikki Siapno

November 2025

How CDNs Turn Global Traffic Into Local Delivery

(6 Minutes) | When to Use Them, What to Cache and for How Long, and Common Mistakes, How They Work, and the Benefits

Nov 23, 2025 • Nikki Siapno

CDC Clearly Explained

(6 Minutes) | How it Works, When to Use it (and When Not to), The Trade-Offs, and Why Teams Adopt CDC

Nov 19, 2025 • Nikki Siapno

How Observability Turns Alerts Into Insight

(5 Minutes) | What it is (and Isn't), How it Works, and Building Sustainable Observability

Nov 12, 2025 • Nikki Siapno

JWT Clearly Explained

(6 Minutes) | How JWTs Work, the Advantages, the Tradeoffs, Where They Shine, and When Not to Use Them

Nov 4, 2025 • Nikki Siapno

October 2025

(5 Minutes) | How to Choose, How Each Works, the Differences, the Benefits, and the Trade-Offs

Oct 25, 2025 • Nikki Siapno

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