The Platform Engineer's Path #4intermediate

Software Architecture & Design Foundations

The decisions that matter most are the ones that are expensive to change. Learn monolith vs microservices, SOLID, DDD, event-driven architecture, CQRS, API design, database architecture, caching, and security. Write ADRs that future you will thank you for.

What You Build

A complete system design: requirements analysis, ADRs, domain model, event-driven architecture, API contracts, data model, and security review

Sections

Lessons

Estimated

Concepts

Prerequisites

Zero to AI-Powered Developer

architecturedesign-patternsdddevent-drivencqrsapi-designsecurity

Alex (Primary)

conversational · energetic

First 5 lessons are free (36% of the course). No login required.

Thinking in Architecture

What architecture means, monolith vs microservices, and documenting decisions.

What Architecture Actually Means (And Why Devs Get It Wrong)

25 min Build in Public

Tweet: Tweet: 'Architecture isn't boxes and arrows. It's the decisions that are expensive to change later. Every other decision is just implementation.'

Monolith vs Microservices vs Modular Monolith

30 min Ship

Ship: Decision matrix: when monolith, modular monolith, or microservices fit

Architecture Decision Records (ADRs)

25 min Ship

Ship: 3 ADRs documenting real architecture decisions for a sample project

Design Principles & Patterns

SOLID, design patterns, and domain-driven design.

SOLID Principles in Practice (Not Theory)

35 min Ship

Ship: Refactored codebase demonstrating all 5 SOLID principles

Design Patterns That Actually Get Used

35 min Ship

Ship: Implementations of Strategy, Observer, Factory, and Repository patterns

Preview — content blurs halfway through

Domain-Driven Design: Bounded Contexts & Aggregates

35 min

Unlock the rest of this course

$5 for full course or $25/mo for everything

See pricing

System Communication Patterns

Event-driven architecture, CQRS, message queues, and API design.

Event-Driven Architecture: Events, Commands, Queries

35 min

CQRS: Separate Reads from Writes

30 min

Message Queues & Async Processing: Kafka, RabbitMQ, SQS

35 min

API Design: REST, GraphQL & gRPC — Picking the Right One

30 min

Data & Security Architecture

Database choices, caching strategies, and security architecture.

Database Architecture: SQL, NoSQL, and When to Use Each

30 min

Caching Strategies: Redis, CDN, Application-Level

25 min

Security Architecture: Auth, AuthZ, OWASP Top 10

30 min

Final Ship

Design a complete system from requirements to architecture.

Design a System from Requirements to Architecture

55 min

Next Course

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Software Architecture & Design Foundations

What You Build

A complete system design: requirements analysis, ADRs, domain model, event-driven architecture, API contracts, data model, and security review