Lean System Design

Short summary

Lean System Design advocates building systems to meet explicit requirements with minimal complexity. Most real-world systems handle 10-1000 RPS—not Google scale—and complex distributed approaches often create unnecessary overhead. Examples like Stack Overflow and GitHub Pages show million-user systems can thrive on simple single-machine architectures.

• •Most systems don't need Google-scale distributed architecture; 10-1000 RPS with simple design suffices
• •Distributed systems add complexity in consistency, availability, and maintenance that often outweighs benefits for typical workloads
• •Real examples (Stack Overflow 6k QPS, GitHub Pages on paired machines) prove simple architectures can serve millions efficiently

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