why distributed? the single machine ceiling

watch lesson 01

distributed systems in a day

AI writes code. you architect systems. 24 lessons across 6 modules, first principles, no hand-waving.

24 lessons|6 modules|4 hours

what you’ll learn

design systems that survive node failures, network partitions, and clock skew
reason about consistency, availability, and partition tolerance from first principles
implement the protocols you'll be asked about in interviews — Raft, gossip, leader election
build intuition for why every real distributed system trades correctness for latency somewhere
read papers (Dynamo, Spanner, Kafka) the way the authors meant them to be read

curriculum

01

module one

communication

54 min6 lessons

01why distributed? the single machine ceilingfree10m

02tcp: reliable delivery over unreliable networks9m

03tls: how https actually works10m

04service discovery: how services find each other8m

05api design for distributed systems8m

06anatomy of a distributed system9m

module quiz · communication

5 questions · ~5m · test your recall before moving on

02

module two

coordination

55 min5 lessons

07system models and failure modes11m

08clocks are broken: physical, logical, and vectorfree12m

09leader election and raft10m

10replication: leader-follower to chain replication10m

11consensus and consistency models12m

module quiz · coordination

5 questions · ~5m · test your recall before moving on

03

module three

coordination avoidance

36 min4 lessons

12broadcast protocols: eager, gossip, crdt-ready9m

13crdts: data structures that never conflict9m

14dynamo-style datastores and quorum math8m

15transactions across machines10m

module quiz · coordination avoidance

5 questions · ~5m · test your recall before moving on

04

module four

scalability

52 min5 lessons

16caching: the fastest request is one you don't make14m

17partitioning and consistent hashing10m

18load balancing: dns, l4, and l78m

19data storage: choosing the right database9m

20messaging and event-driven systems11m

module quiz · scalability

5 questions · ~5m · test your recall before moving on

05

module five

resiliency

32 min3 lessons

21how things break: a taxonomy of failure8m

22timeouts, retries, and circuit breakers10m

23rate limiting, load shedding, and backpressure14m

module quiz · resiliency

5 questions · ~5m · test your recall before moving on

06

module six

operations

17 min2 lessons

24observability: metrics, logs, and traces10m

--what to learn next7m

module quiz · operations

5 questions · ~5m · test your recall before moving on

frequently asked

do i need a math/CS background?: no. comfort with code and a willingness to think carefully about failure modes is enough. there's no probability theory or formal proofs in this course.
what if i can't afford the founding pass?: email mail@karnstack.com from a student address (.edu, .ac.in, equivalent) and we'll work something out.
is there a refund?: yes — 7 days, no questions, mail@karnstack.com.
do you cover specific systems like kafka or cassandra?: we walk through their key papers and design decisions, but the focus is the underlying principles. once you understand consensus and replication, you can read any new system's docs and recognise what they're trading off.