This index maps 140 topics across seven areas to the main-book section that teaches each one. "Not covered" means this guide does not teach it: learn it elsewhere if your loop needs it. "Appendix only" means it is in the appendix, not the main book. The list is the author's, not a ranking of what companies ask; the matching is by the words each section uses, checked by eye.
83 of 140 topics are taught somewhere in the guide; 57 are not covered.
DSA
Table: Topic, Where this guide teaches it (20 rows)
| Topic | Where this guide teaches it |
|---|
| Arrays and strings | lesson 6, The drill set; lesson 6, The moves, minute by minute |
| Hashing | lesson 6, Two first problems: a hash map and two pointers; lesson 6, Coding at Staff and Principal |
| Two pointers | lesson 6, Two first problems: a hash map and two pointers; lesson 6, The moves, minute by minute |
| Sliding window | lesson 8, A senior-bar model answer: a rate-limiting service, start to finish; lesson 6, The pattern selector |
| Prefix sum | lesson 6, The pattern selector; lesson 6, Eight problems solved to the end |
| Binary search | lesson 6, The moves, minute by minute |
| Stack and queue | lesson 6, Costs to know by heart; lesson 6, The pattern selector |
| Monotonic stack | lesson 6, The pattern selector |
| Linked list | lesson 6, The pattern selector |
| Recursion | lesson 6, The pattern selector; lesson 6, The drill set |
| Backtracking | lesson 6, The moves, minute by minute; lesson 6, The pattern selector |
| Trees and BST | lesson 6, The pattern selector; lesson 6, The drill set |
| Heap and priority queue | lesson 6, The pattern selector; lesson 6, Eight more families as templates |
| Tries | lesson 6, Eight more families as templates; lesson 6, The pattern selector |
| Graphs, BFS and DFS | lesson 6, The pattern selector; lesson 14, DSA from zero in eight weeks |
| Topological sort | lesson 6, The pattern selector |
| Dijkstra | lesson 6, The pattern selector |
| Union find | lesson 6, The pattern selector; lesson 6, The drill set |
| Greedy | lesson 6, The pattern selector |
| Dynamic programming | lesson 6, Dynamic programming families; lesson 6, The moves, minute by minute |
Next stop: Backend, 1 min
Backend
Table: Topic, Where this guide teaches it (20 rows)
| Topic | Where this guide teaches it |
|---|
| REST APIs | lesson 8, The API layer and security at each hop |
| HTTP and status codes | lesson 8, The API layer and security at each hop |
| Authentication with JWT | lesson 8, The API layer and security at each hop |
| OAuth 2.0 | not covered |
| Sessions and cookies | lesson 8, The API layer and security at each hop |
| SQL vs NoSQL | not covered |
| Database indexing | not covered |
| Transactions and ACID | lesson 8, Two-phase commit versus a saga; lesson 8, Design 3: a payments ledger |
| ORM and migrations | not covered |
| Caching with Redis | lesson 8, The pushback bank: five follow-ups for each know-cold design |
| Message queues | lesson 3, What a recruiter searches; lesson 4, The hiring-manager screen: Meera at SDE-3 |
| Rate limiting | lesson 8, The pushback bank: five follow-ups for each know-cold design |
| WebSockets | lesson 8, Capacity estimation: the arithmetic you do out loud |
| Background jobs | not covered |
| File uploads to S3 | not covered |
| Pagination | lesson 8, The API layer and security at each hop; lesson 8, Start here: the priority spine |
| API versioning | not covered |
| Input validation | not covered |
| Logging and monitoring | lesson 8, Recovery, SLOs and migrations: one table |
| Unit and integration tests | not covered |
Next stop: System design (HLD), 1 min
System design (HLD)
Table: Topic, Where this guide teaches it (20 rows)
| Topic | Where this guide teaches it |
|---|
| Scalability | not covered |
| Load balancing | lesson 8, Building blocks: one trade-off table |
| Caching | lesson 6, A design-a-class problem: the LRU cache; lesson 8, Start here: the priority spine |
| CDN | lesson 8, Building blocks: one trade-off table |
| Database sharding | lesson 8, Start here: the priority spine; lesson 8, The pushback bank: five follow-ups for each know-cold design |
| Replication | lesson 8, Consistency: CAP, PACELC and the models; lesson 8, Building blocks: one trade-off table |
| Consistent hashing | lesson 8, Building blocks: one trade-off table |
| CAP theorem | lesson 8, Consistency: CAP, PACELC and the models |
| PACELC | lesson 8, Consistency: CAP, PACELC and the models |
| Consistency models | lesson 8, Consistency: CAP, PACELC and the models |
| Kafka and pub/sub | lesson 3, What a recruiter searches; lesson 4, The nine questions, and two probes |
| Event driven architecture | lesson 4, The hiring-manager screen: Meera at SDE-3; lesson 8, Design 3: a payments ledger |
| Microservices | lesson 8, Building blocks: one trade-off table |
| API gateway | lesson 8, Building blocks: one trade-off table |
| Rate limiter design | lesson 8, The pushback bank: five follow-ups for each know-cold design |
| Bloom filter | not covered |
| Circuit breaker | lesson 8, Overload: retry budgets, deadlines, shedding, breakers |
| Saga pattern | lesson 8, Two-phase commit versus a saga |
| Blob storage | lesson 8, Building blocks: one trade-off table |
| Back of envelope estimation | lesson 8, Capacity estimation: the arithmetic you do out loud |
Next stop: Machine coding (LLD), 1 min
Machine coding (LLD)
Table: Topic, Where this guide teaches it (20 rows)
| Topic | Where this guide teaches it |
|---|
| OOP pillars | lesson 7, SOLID and the patterns on one page |
| SOLID principles | lesson 7, SOLID and the patterns on one page; lesson 1, Years against scope |
| DRY, KISS, YAGNI | not covered |
| Composition over inheritance | lesson 7, SOLID and the patterns on one page |
| UML class diagrams | not covered |
| Singleton | lesson 7, SOLID and the patterns on one page |
| Factory | lesson 7, SOLID and the patterns on one page |
| Abstract factory | lesson 7, SOLID and the patterns on one page |
| Builder | lesson 7, SOLID and the patterns on one page |
| Prototype | not covered |
| Adapter | lesson 7, What a Staff candidate adds; lesson 7, SOLID and the patterns on one page |
| Decorator | lesson 7, SOLID and the patterns on one page |
| Facade | lesson 7, SOLID and the patterns on one page |
| Proxy | lesson 7, SOLID and the patterns on one page |
| Observer | lesson 7, SOLID and the patterns on one page |
| Strategy | lesson 7, SOLID and the patterns on one page |
| Command | lesson 7, SOLID and the patterns on one page |
| State | lesson 7, A second shape: a seat hold as a state machine |
| Thread safety | lesson 7, Concurrency; lesson 8, A senior-bar model answer: a rate-limiting service, start to finish |
| Machine coding | lesson 7, the whole lesson |
Next stop: Security, 1 min
Security
Table: Topic, Where this guide teaches it (20 rows)
| Topic | Where this guide teaches it |
|---|
| OWASP Top 10 | not covered |
| SQL injection | not covered |
| XSS | not covered |
| CSRF | not covered |
| CORS | lesson 8, The API layer and security at each hop |
| SSRF | not covered |
| HTTPS and TLS | not covered |
| Hashing and encryption | appendix only: Design 4: chat |
| Password hashing | not covered |
| Secure sessions | not covered |
| JWT security | lesson 8, The API layer and security at each hop |
| OAuth security | not covered |
| Secrets management | not covered |
| IAM and least privilege | not covered |
| Security headers and CSP | not covered |
| Rate limiting and DDoS | not covered |
| Input validation | not covered |
| Dependency scanning | not covered |
| Penetration testing | not covered |
| Prompt injection | lesson 9, The AI concepts a design or AI round probes |
Next stop: DevOps, 1 min
DevOps
Table: Topic, Where this guide teaches it (20 rows)
| Topic | Where this guide teaches it |
|---|
| Linux and Bash | not covered |
| Networking basics | not covered |
| Git and GitHub | not covered |
| Docker | not covered |
| Docker Compose | not covered |
| Kubernetes | not covered |
| Helm | not covered |
| CI/CD pipelines | not covered |
| GitHub Actions | not covered |
| AWS cloud | not covered |
| Terraform | not covered |
| Ansible | not covered |
| Nginx reverse proxy | not covered |
| Load balancers | lesson 8, Building blocks: one trade-off table |
| Prometheus | not covered |
| Grafana | not covered |
| ELK logging | not covered |
| Blue green deploys | lesson 8, The Operate-it block that closes every design |
| Auto scaling | not covered |
| Secrets management | not covered |
Next stop: AI and agents, 1 min
AI and agents
Table: Topic, Where this guide teaches it (20 rows)
| Topic | Where this guide teaches it |
|---|
| LLM fundamentals | lesson 9, A worked LLM-feature design, with numbers |
| Tokens and context window | not covered |
| Prompt engineering | not covered |
| Structured outputs | lesson 9, The AI concepts a design or AI round probes |
| Embeddings | not covered |
| Vector databases | not covered |
| RAG pipelines | lesson 9, The AI concepts a design or AI round probes |
| Chunking strategies | lesson 9, The AI concepts a design or AI round probes; lesson 9, A worked LLM-feature design, with numbers |
| Reranking | lesson 9, The AI concepts a design or AI round probes |
| Tool calling | lesson 9, The AI concepts a design or AI round probes |
| MCP protocol | lesson 9, The AI concepts a design or AI round probes |
| ReAct agent loop | lesson 9, The AI concepts a design or AI round probes |
| Planning and reflection | not covered |
| Agent memory | not covered |
| Multi agent systems | not covered |
| Agent orchestration | not covered |
| Guardrails | lesson 9, The AI concepts a design or AI round probes |
| Evals | lesson 9, A worked LLM-feature design, with numbers; lesson 9, The AI concepts a design or AI round probes |
| Observability and tracing | not covered |
| Fine tuning with LoRA | lesson 9, The AI concepts a design or AI round probes |