Top 5 Courses to Learn System Design and Software Architecture in 2022 – Best of Lot

Software design or System design is one of the tricky concepts to master. You can quickly learn a programming language like Java or Python, but creating software using that programming language is a totally different thing. That’s where software design and coding skills come to the rescue. It’s actually an art to structure your program, design your modules, specify boundaries and interactions with other parts of the system so that they are easier to read, maintain, and flexible to change. It’s one of the most essential skills for a software developer but often gets ignored. If you look for an online course to learn Software design and architecture, you won’t find many, forget about good ones.

At the same, time if you look for courses to learn Java, Python, or JavaScript, you will find tons of classes. That’s why we have tons of programmer who knows Java, Python, and JavaScript but when it comes to software development, system design, coding, and software design they often struggle.

To help my readers with this problem, I did some research and come up with this list of best Software/System design and Architecture online courses.

You can take these courses to build this powerful skill which will serve life long. Unlike programming languages, frameworks, and libraries, this skill also doesn’t become outdated in a few years.

Btw, prepare to work hard. Just joining and the online course won’t be enough as most of the people just join the course without actually completing it or doing what the instructor says.

You don’t learn when you join an online course, you learn, when you work and apply the knowledge you have gained. That’s where project-based courses shine. They encourage you to use your experience to solve real-world problems, and you will find a couple of such classes on this list.

7 Best Software Design and Architecture Courses for Programmers to Learn Online in 2022

Without wasting any more of your time, here is my list of some of the great, interactive, and fun online courses to learn Software design and Architecture. The list includes online courses to learn system design, software architecture, and object-oriented design from Udemy, Coursera, edX, and Educative platform. 

1. Grokking the System Design Interview

This is one of my favorite courses when it comes to learning Software Design or System design. It’s actually created to prepare you for the System design interview, but you can also use it to learn how to approach System design in general.

The Grokking, the System Design Interview, is one of the first courses (or book) that describes the Large Scale Distributed System Design problems in detail. Even if you’ve worked on Distributed Systems before, there are a lot of things that you can learn from this course.

The authors have created this course to provide you design choices(including pros and cons) so that you can understand the requirement, compare approaches, and come up with the best solution for the problem at hand.

They are also mindful to not be overwhelmed with the information and provide a solution at a granularity that’s appropriate for a 45-minute discussion. This makes the course very interesting. Even if you are not preparing for Coding interviews, I suggest you take this course to improve your System design skills.

2. Pragmatic System Design [Udemy]

3. Software Design and Architecture Specialization [Coursera]

This is another, well-structured course to learn Software design and Architecture. It is offered by the University of Alberta and delivered by Kenny Wong. The specialization contains 5 online courses to teach you object-oriented design, design patterns, software architecture, and Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA).

The specialization also includes a project, and you will be awarded a certificate after completing the course. The best part of this specialization is that you will learn the science behind Software design and architecture.

Once you know the relevant patterns and principles, it would be much easier to communicate your plan with your fellow programmers and stakeholders. You will also gain the ability to critically view a software or piece of code from the design perspective.

3. Data Structures and Software Design by edX

This System Design online course, part of the CS Essentials for Software Development Professional Certificate program, will take your skills to the next level by teaching you how to write “good” software that appropriately represents and organizes data, is easy to maintain, and is of high quality.

You will not only learn how to convert a set of requirements into a high-quality software design but also how to write efficient code that is easy to read, understand, and modify.

This is a great free course to learn software design and data structure, two of the essential skills for programmers and software developers. The course is 4-weeks long and requires 8-10 hours of effort weekly. The course also offers a certificate, but you need to pay for it.

4. Secure Software Design Specialization [Coursera]

Security is an essential concern of Modern software design, and this specialization is focused on teaching you how to design secure software. There are 4 courses in this Specialization that will not only show you practices of safe software design but also introduce you to tools and security threads and how to mitigate them.

Like other Coursera specializations, all four courses are free-to-audit, but you need to pay a small fee if you need a certificate of completion, something which you can add to your CV or LinkedIn profile.

This certificate gives you the right to show the world that you know about secure software design. The course is offered by the University of Colorado.

By the way, if you find Coursera courses useful, then I also suggest you join the Coursera Plus, a subscription plan from Coursera which gives you unlimited access to their most popular courses, specialization, professional certificate, and guided projects. It cost around $399/year but its complete worth your money as you get unlimited certificates

5. Java Programming: Principles of Software Design [Coursera]

This is an excellent course for Java programer to learn the principles of Software design. In this course, you will learn how to solve real-world problems with Java using multiple classes.

You will also create programming solutions that scale using Java interfaces. Recognize that software engineering is more than writing code – it also involves logical thinking and design.

As part of the course, you will also enter a program that analyzes and sorts earthquake data and developed a predictive text generator. If you are a Java programmer, then I highly recommend this course for you.

It’s also part of the Java Programming and Software Engineering Fundamentals Specialization, which has helped many programmers to start their Java careers

.

6. Master Object-Oriented Design in Java – Homework + Solutions [Udemy]

One of the problems with Java developers is that they know how to code, but mostly they are not aware of how to write useful industry-standard object-oriented software. This course tries to fill that gap.

In this course, you will not only learn about object-oriented programming and design using abstract classes and interfaces but also about OOP design principles like SOLID and outline patterns and design patterns like Builder, Observer, and Decorator, which are vital for writing modular and flexible code.

The course also has assignments where you can apply the knowledge to design software from scratch, which is really great to truly master this valuable skill. The course has been created by Imtiaz Ahmad, one of the Udemy best seller instructors, and more than 19,363 students have already enrolled in this course.

7. Web Application & Software Architecture 101 [Educative.io]

You’ll learn about various architectural styles such as the client-server, peer-to-peer decentralized architecture, microservices, and the fundamentals of data flow in a web application.

This course is also a great stepping stone to the fundamentals of system design. Knowledge of software architecture will prove to be very valuable for beginner devs and those who are actively interviewing (especially full-stack developers).

That’s all about some of the best courses to learn about software design and architecture. As I have said, investing time and effort in these skills goes a long way in your career and becoming a better software developer. They also help you to crack coding interviews because the object-oriented design and system design are an integral part of programming job interviews. If you need some practice, you can also see the Grokking The System Design course on Educative.

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Thanks for reading this article so far. If you like these best software architecture and system design courses, then please share them with your friends and colleagues, they will appreciate it. If you have any questions or feedback, then please drop a note.

P.S. – If you are looking to learn Object-Oriented Programming and design, then you can also check out this list of free OOP courses to build your foundations and fill gaps in your understanding.