Grokking the System Design Interview
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Stateful vs Stateless Architecture

A user logs in to a shopping website, and server 1 handles the login. The user's next click goes to server 3. Does server 3 know that this user is logged in?

The answer depends on one design choice: where the system keeps the data it needs to remember between requests. This lesson explains the two options, stateful and stateless, what each one costs, and why one of them is the usual default.

What State Means

State is data that a system remembers between requests. Examples are who is logged in, what is in a shopping cart, and a half-written message.

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Andre Hildinger

Andre Hildinger

· 6 months ago

I don't want to get into details because it'd be too long, but this whole explanation is misleading in multiple ways.

Every application has state in some capacity, but what we call "stateless architecture" is the default choice for the majority of backend applications. It's very hard to justify a stateful server (or it's very niche).

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