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#API Design

4 articles

High Level Design

API Design

What makes a good API — goals of scalability, extensibility, and ease of use, plus REST best practices and common design patterns.

Aug 10, 2026
System DesignAPI DesignREST

High Level Design

Idempotency in Distributed Systems

Why idempotency matters, how to implement idempotency keys in APIs and message queues, and the trade-offs of tracking duplicate requests.

Aug 10, 2026
System DesignAPI DesignIdempotency

High Level Design

Rate Limiting: System Architecture

Why rate limiting matters, the Timer Wheel and Hierarchical Timer Wheel approach, and a full distributed rate-limiting architecture with request sharding.

Aug 10, 2026
System DesignRate LimitingAPI Design

High Level Design

Design a Rate Limiter

A comprehensive study guide to designing a production-grade rate limiter. Covers placement strategies, five core algorithms with trade-offs, high-level and detailed design, and distributed system challenges like race conditions and synchronization.

Aug 9, 2026
System DesignRate LimitingAPI Design