System Design - lesson 7 | HackIndia Skills

System Design - lesson 7 | HackIndia Skills | HackIndia

Example

README trade-offs

Add a short section like this to your repository README. Keep it close to your architecture diagram and API list.

This example is for a campus event app that sends registration emails after a user signs up.

## Trade-offs

### 1. PostgreSQL instead of MongoDB
We chose PostgreSQL because our main data is relational: users, events, registrations, and colleges.
It lets us use joins and unique constraints to stop duplicate registrations.

Trade-off accepted: changing the schema takes more planning than a document database.
For a hackathon app, this is okay because our data model is small and stable.

### 2. Queue for email sending instead of sending inside the signup API
We push email jobs to a queue after saving the registration.
This keeps the signup API fast even if the email provider is slow.

Trade-off accepted: the email may arrive a few seconds later.
We also need a worker process, so deployment has one extra moving part.

Explain trade-offs clearly

One idea

What to compare

Use this frame

Use real constraints

Avoid fake certainty

README trade-offs

What reviewers notice

Do this now

Quick check