Large scale internet application, where to start?

Question

I'm involving in kind of work that i think knowledge about large scale application, large scale web will help me much. What do you think i should take? I mean books to read, courses to take... etc... Thanks in advance for any suggestion.

PS: maybe applications i mean are not large enough :D, kind of social network for >100k users or realtime game online for 5000 ccu. architecture and design, things to consider when you build these kind of applications

Answer 1

security: http://www.owasp.org/index.php/Category:OWASP_Top_Ten_Project

scalability (db layer): http://oreilly.com/catalog/9780596003067 (half of the book is very relevant for any database)

scalability (app layer): http://www.javaconcurrencyinpractice.com/ (half of the book is very relevant for any language with shared state and threads)

front end: http://www.amazon.com/High-Performance-Web-Sites-Essential/dp/0596529309/ and http://www.amazon.com/Even-Faster-Web-Sites-Performance/dp/0596522304

Also, just to get a grasp of how difficult things are sometimes, you should start reading that those 2 blogs:

• http://engineering.twitter.com/
• http://www.facebook.com/notes.php?id=9445547199

Answer 2

Great blog with articles and architecture overviews of big applications and websites: http://highscalability.com/

Answer 3

You should read: What should a developer know before building a public web site?