A hands-on engineering reference — Go from basics to internals, distributed systems, Kubernetes architecture, AWS infrastructure, and SRE practices.
graph TD
subgraph SDE-1 Foundation
BASICS[Go Basics<br/>packages → context] --> PATTERNS[Design Patterns<br/>error handling · 12-factor · API design]
PATTERNS --> INFRA[Infrastructure<br/>Docker · CI/CD · K8s · Terraform · Helm]
PATTERNS --> BACKEND[Backend Fundamentals<br/>auth · caching · MQ · SQL vs NoSQL]
BACKEND --> PROJECTS_1[Projects: SDE-1<br/>grpc · cache · secure-api · from-scratch 01-11]
end
subgraph SDE-2 Advanced
INFRA --> PLATFORM[Platform Engineering<br/>GitOps · secrets · chaos engineering]
BACKEND --> DISTRIBUTED[Distributed Systems<br/>consistency · CDC · Raft · sagas · event sourcing]
DISTRIBUTED --> PROJECTS_2[Projects: SDE-2<br/>raft-kv · saga · event-sourced · xdp-firewall]
PLATFORM --> INTERNALS[Go Internals<br/>G-M-P scheduler · GC · eBPF · assembly]
end
1. go/packages → Variables, functions, types, constants
2. go/flow_control_statements → For, if, switch, defer
3. go/more_types → Pointers, structs, slices, maps, closures
4. go/methods → Value/pointer receivers, fmt.Stringer
5. go/interfaces → Implicit satisfaction, type assertions, embedding
6. go/error_handling → Custom errors, wrapping (%w), panic/recover
7. go/generics → Type parameters, constraints, generic types
8. go/concurrency → Goroutines, channels, select, mutex, worker pool
9. go/context → Cancellation, timeouts, request-scoped values
| Topic | Where |
|---|---|
| Testing (table-driven, mocks, fuzz) | go/go-internals/testing-patterns/ |
| Production Go (timeouts, pprof, graceful shutdown) | go/go-internals/production-go/ |
| Module patterns (go.work, internal/) | go/go-internals/module-patterns/ |
| Error handling mastery | go/design-patterns/error-handling/ |
| API design (REST, pagination, OpenAPI) | go/design-patterns/api-design/ |
| 12-Factor App | go/design-patterns/twelve-factor/ |
| Topic | Level | Where |
|---|---|---|
| Docker deep dive | SDE-1 | system-design/docker-deep-dive/ |
| CI/CD pipelines | SDE-1 | system-design/cicd/ |
| Kubernetes core | SDE-1 | system-design/kubernetes-core/ |
| Auth (OAuth2, JWT) | SDE-1 | system-design/auth-deep-dive/ |
| Caching strategies | SDE-1 | system-design/caching-strategies/ |
| SQL vs NoSQL | SDE-1 | system-design/sql-vs-nosql/ |
| Message queues | SDE-1 | system-design/message-queue-patterns/ |
| Rate limiting & backpressure | SDE-1 | system-design/backpressure/ |
| Observability & tracing | SDE-1 | system-design/observability-guide/ |
| Consistency models | SDE-2 | system-design/consistency-models/ |
| Database internals | SDE-2 | system-design/database-internals/ |
| Distributed locking | SDE-1 | system-design/distributed-locking/ |
| CDC (Change Data Capture) | SDE-2 | system-design/cdc/ |
| Capacity planning | SDE-2 | system-design/capacity-planning/ |
| GitOps | SDE-2 | system-design/gitops/ |
| Chaos engineering | SDE-2 | system-design/chaos-engineering/ |
Deep-dive reference for Kubernetes internals, AWS architecture, and SRE practices. See devops/ for the full index.
| Topic | Where |
|---|---|
| K8s architecture (control plane, nodes, components) | devops/kubernetes/README.md |
kubectl apply end-to-end flow |
devops/kubernetes/README.md |
| Scheduler internals (Filter → Score, worked example) | devops/kubernetes/README.md |
| Taints, tolerations, node affinity, GPU node groups | devops/kubernetes/README.md |
| EKS architecture (AWS-managed vs customer-managed) | devops/kubernetes/eks-architecture.md |
| VPC, public/private subnets, route tables | devops/aws/README.md |
| Security Groups vs NACLs (stateful vs stateless) | devops/aws/README.md |
| NAT Gateway, IGW, VPC Peering, Transit Gateway | devops/aws/README.md |
| IAM, ELB/ALB/NLB, Route53, ECS vs EKS | devops/aws/services-overview.md |
| 5XX debugging runbook (K8s + EKS) | devops/sre/README.md |
| OOM recovery (singleton + distributed) | devops/sre/README.md |
Leader election with client-go Lease API |
devops/sre/README.md |
| Self-healing infra + AIOps (Argo Events, auto-remediation, LLM agent) | devops/sre/self-healing-aiops.md |
| GPU scheduling, MIG, DCGM metrics | devops/ai-infra/gpu-scheduling.md |
| KubeRay distributed compute, RayCluster | devops/ai-infra/kuberay.md |
| KServe, vLLM serving, PagedAttention, KV cache | devops/ai-infra/model-serving.md |
| RAG, vector DBs, LangSmith tracing, guardrails | devops/ai-infra/llmops.md |
| MLflow / W&B experiment tracking, model registry | devops/mlops/experiment-tracking.md |
| Kubeflow Pipelines, retraining triggers | devops/mlops/training-pipelines.md |
| Data drift detection, shadow scoring, A/B model testing | devops/mlops/data-drift.md |
Two series live at the root:
From Scratch (from-scratch/) — 15 projects building distributed systems primitives from zero using only the stdlib. Start here for SDE-1.
| Range | What you build |
|---|---|
| FS-01 → FS-05 | TCP server → HTTP → WebSocket chat → rate limiter → load balancer |
| FS-06 → FS-10 | Message queue → distributed cache → log aggregator → task scheduler → URL shortener (capstone) |
| FS-11 | API gateway (chi, JWT, ReverseProxy) |
| FS-12 → FS-15 | Consistent hash · Bloom filter · CRDTs · Commit log (SDE-2) |
See from-scratch/README.md for the full index with architecture diagrams.
Platform Projects (projects/) — 22 production-grade projects (gRPC, Raft, eBPF, Kubernetes operators, event sourcing, sagas…). Tackle after from-scratch. See projects/README.md.
| If you can... | You're at... |
|---|---|
| Write Go with proper error handling, tests, and modules | SDE-1 basics ✅ |
| Deploy a Go service with Docker + CI/CD + K8s | SDE-1 DevOps ✅ |
| Design APIs with auth, caching, rate limiting, MQ | SDE-1 backend ✅ |
| Explain consistency models, CAP, and design for scale | SDE-2 system design ✅ |
| Build consensus protocols, event sourcing, CDC pipelines | SDE-2 distributed systems ✅ |
| Profile with pprof, understand GC, write operators | SDE-2 platform engineering ✅ |
For the full deep-dive series with SDE-1/SDE-2 level markers on every topic, see the Master Table of Contents.
go run . packages
go run . concurrency worker-pool
go run . context timeout
go run . # show helpFrom Scratch (from-scratch/) — 15 standalone projects using only the Go stdlib. Each has its own go.mod, README.md, and Makefile.
See from-scratch/README.md for the full index (FS-01 → FS-15) with architecture diagrams.
Platform Projects (projects/) — 22 production-grade Go modules. Each is a separate Go module with its own README, docs, and Makefile.
See projects/README.md for the full project index with architecture diagrams and level markers.
mkdir go/mytopicCreate go/mytopic/mytopic.go with Run() and RunExample(name string) functions, then register in main.go with a case "mytopic": block and import tour_of_go/go/mytopic.