Complex Systems at Scale

Building Critical and Secure Software with Next.js, FastAPI, and AWS.

This book follows the real journey from a lean v0.1 stack to enterprise-grade systems: architecture, frontend, microservices, security by design, and AI-native patterns for modern teams.

5 Parts18 ChaptersEngineers, Tech Leads, EMs

A complete roadmap across architecture, deployment, security, resilience, and AI integration.

Part I - Foundations of Complex Systems

01. What Makes a System Complex - emergence, feedback loops, failure modes
02. The Stack as a System - Next.js + FastAPI + AWS architecture map
03. Designing for Scale from Day One - patterns that age well

Part II - The Modern Frontend

04. Next.js as the Backbone - App Router, Server Components, streaming
05. Vercel vs. AWS - choosing your deployment surface
06. Frontend at Scale - CDN, caching, edge delivery

Part III - Microservices with FastAPI

07. Why FastAPI for Microservices - async, OpenAPI, validation
08. Lambdas vs. EC2 - deployment trade-offs on AWS
09. Service Communication and Resilience - queues, retries, circuit breakers
10. Observability - logs, metrics, traces, OpenTelemetry

Part IV - Security: Secure from Code

11. Security Starts in Development - threat modeling, secrets, SAST
12. OWASP Top 10 in the Real World - vulnerabilities and practical fixes
13. Pentesting Your Own Infrastructure - nmap, nikto, sqlmap, Burp in CI/CD
14. Hardening AWS - IAM least privilege, VPC, reverse proxy, WAF

Part V - AI-Native Systems