Grokking the System Design Interview
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Synchronous vs Asynchronous Communication

A user clicks "Place Order". The system now has six jobs. It must charge the card, save the order, send a confirmation email, tell the warehouse, update recommendations, and record analytics.

Which of those should the user wait for?

The card and the order, certainly. If the card fails, there is no order. But nobody should wait on a loading screen while a recommendation model updates.

This is the choice this lesson is about. For every call between two services, ask one question. Does the caller need the result before it can continue? If yes, make the call synchronous

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Tom G

Tom G

· 2 days ago

"If you are asked why not make everything asynchronous, the availability multiplication argument is a strong one: every synchronous hop you remove from the critical path takes its failure rate out of the availability the user sees."

shouldn't this be "If you are asked why not make everything synchronous.... ?

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