Foundations of Distributed Systems and Web Services

Modern web applications rely on infrastructure that spans multiple servers, databases, and regions. Understanding how these systems communicate and scale is essential for any aspiring developer or cloud engineer. This written course guides you through the core principles of distributed architectures and web services, giving you the knowledge to design resilient, interconnected cloud applications. You will transition from understanding simple client-server models to conceptualizing scalable, fault-tolerant systems. What you'll learn: Understand foundational distributed systems concepts, including latency, consistency, and consensus. Design robust web services using RESTful API design principles and modern communication protocols like gRPC. Explore microservices architecture and how services discover and communicate with each other. Apply basic containerization concepts using Docker to package and deploy services. Configure message queues and asynchronous communication patterns for decoupled systems. Implement basic observability practices, including centralized logging and distributed tracing. We begin by establishing key definitions and core terminology of distributed computing before moving into practical architecture patterns, API design, and modern cloud-native deployment strategies. This text-based guide is designed for beginners with basic programming knowledge who want to understand how modern cloud systems operate behind the scenes. Start building your architectural foundation today.