Distributed systems are prevalent in modern software but come with complexities such as communication, security, and observability. Designing these systems requires anticipating failures and implementing debuggability to quickly understand and resolve issues. Key practices include designing for failure, choosing appropriate consistency and availability models, building on a solid foundation with technologies like zero-trust architecture and containers, minimizing dependencies through service decomposition and asynchronous communication, and enhancing system performance monitoring with modern observability tools. Additionally, designing dev-first debugging workflows ensures that engineers have complete context when addressing issues, minimizing time spent on gathering information and maximizing time spent on problem-solving and system improvement. The emphasis is on proactive planning and equipping teams with comprehensive tools and methodologies to manage the intricate nature of distributed systems efficiently.