// about

About Cloudmash

Cloudmash explains how software really works, visually. We take the systems engineers rely on every day, from load balancers, caches and databases to distributed consensus, machine learning models and large language models, and follow the data through them step by step with diagrams you can watch, step through and play with.

What you will find here

• cloudmash.dev is the home of Cloudmash and of Cloudmash Learn: free, self-paced tracks in system design, machine learning and artificial intelligence, from complete beginner to advanced. Every lesson has interactive diagrams, hands-on simulators, runnable code examples and a short quiz.
• cloudmash.blog publishes long-form deep dives that pair with our videos, with the diagrams and the code.
• The Cloudmash YouTube channel turns the same ideas into animated explainers.

How the content is made

Every lesson and article is written to teach one idea properly: the intuition first, then the mechanics, the trade-offs and a real-world example. Facts about real companies and systems are taken from their own engineering publications and papers, which we link so you can read the original. Code examples are run before publishing, and the output shown on the page is the output the code really produces. AI tools assist with drafting and checking, and every page is reviewed for accuracy before it goes live.

If you spot a mistake, we want to know: email hello@cloudmash.dev and we will correct it.

Free to read

All content is free, with no account required. The sites may show advertising to cover running costs; ads never influence what we write. See the privacy policy for details.