Anish Joshi
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Anish Joshi / Blog

Insights, tutorials, and projects from my journey in software engineering and full-stack development.

Back-of-the-Envelope Calculations in System Design: The Engineer's Guide to Smart EstimationNew
System DesignBackend Engineering

Back-of-the-Envelope Calculations in System Design: The Engineer's Guide to Smart Estimation

Ever been asked "how many servers do you need?" and had no real answer? Back-of-the-envelope calculations give engineers a structured way to estimate QPS, storage, and infrastructure needs before writing a single line of code — using nothing but simple math and smart assumptions.

Apr 12, 2026
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8 min
Read
How Video Streaming Works: From Buffering to Adaptive BitrateNew
System DesignVideo Streaming

How Video Streaming Works: From Buffering to Adaptive Bitrate

Video streaming went from "download the whole file and wait" to seamlessly adapting quality in real time based on your network. Here's the engineering behind how it actually works.

Apr 11, 2026
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5 min
Read

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