Design Pastebin.com (or Bit.ly)

Step 1: Outline use cases and constraints

Use cases

We'll scope the problem to handle only the following use cases

Out of scope

Constraints and assumptions

State assumptions

Calculate usage

Step 2: Create a high level design

Step 3: Design core components

Use case: User enters a block of text and gets a randomly generated link

Use case: User enters a paste's url and views the contents

Use case: Service tracks analytics of pages

Use case: Service deletes expired pastes

Step 4: Scale the design

Additional talking points

NoSQL

Caching

Asynchronism and microservices

Communications

Security

Latency numbers

Ongoing