Hi senior RI developers, I am a newbie to System Design and been recently working in a codebase with a fairly complex architecture. I got recommended the following technical books by our principal engineer: • Designing Data-Intensive Applications by Martin Kleppman • Domain Driven Design by Eric Evans How do you read, digest, internalise and apply concepts from dense technical books?

I’d recommend Domain Driven Design Quickly_,_ a short (~100 pages), quick-readable summary and introduction to the fundamentals of DDD. TBH, I’d skip the heavy ones for now. I think the minibook should be enough if you are just starting now (personal opinion). Also, after reading it, you will be in a better position to decide if you really have to take-up the next book/resource. You can find the book here, https://www.infoq.com/minibooks/domain-driven-design-quickly/

Did this along DDIA https://15445.courses.cs.cmu.edu/fall2021/

Martin's book is nice, but highly detailed. I would highly recommend it, but don't expect to assimilate all of it in 2 weeks.

DDIA by Kleppman is one of the finest books in System design. Only thing is dont try to read it cover to cover in the first go. Use it as a reference that you look up time to time.

I'd advocate against reading the DDD red book until you've went through couple of DDD projects. I'd recommend the blue book (Implementing DDD) or DDD distilled; both are rather easier to grok.

DDIA is very data focused (consistency, locks, partitions) in my opinion. So unless you want to specifically want to do system design from database side of things avoid this for sometime and go with something simpler.

Skip Eric Evans' DDD book. It's a specific style of system design that is not helpful if you're a newbie. Plus the book falls short on practical know-hows, you will need to augment your reading with multiple other readings otherwise you will be mid-way in your DDD journey. I personally like DDD, it provides the fastest iteration process amongst all the design methodologies, but it's definitely not something to learn early in the career. Instead, read Michael Keeling's "Design It!". You will get far more practical insights and a tangible way forward.

@victorious-energy-56764 Design It! looks promising. But I think I saw a typo (or it could be my groggy morning-brain 🥱) in the preface “You can synch your ebooks amongst all your devices”

Sync and Synch are both commonly used.