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Quiz

98 questions of the kind that actually get asked — in interviews, in architecture review boards, and by the person who has to run the thing at 3 AM. Every answer states the trade-off rather than the slogan, and says when the obvious choice is the wrong one.

All areas98 Architecture Fundamentals2 Distributed Systems26 Data Architecture23 Cloud Architecture4 Networking3 API & Integration Architecture1 Reliability & Resilience4 Observability3 Performance & Capacity Engineering3 Security Architecture3 Cost Architecture & FinOps3 Business Architecture2 Architecture Communication2 Enterprise Architecture1 Legacy Modernization2 AI-Era Architecture3 Software Architecture & Engineering3 Architecture Patterns3 Architecture Decision-Making6 The Architect's Meta-Skills1
Difficulty Any beginner intermediate advanced

40 questions.

  1. AI-Era Architecture intermediate Multiple choice

    A client wants an assistant that answers questions from 50,000 internal documents which change weekly. RAG or fine-tuning? What actually determines the quality?

    2 min answer ragllmretrievalarchitecture
  2. API & Integration intermediate Multiple choice

    You are designing APIs for a platform with a web app, a mobile app, internal service-to-service traffic and third-party partners. What do you expose, and where?

    2 min answer restgraphqlgrpcapi-design
  3. Architecture Fundamentals intermediate

    A team shows you a design with eight services. Without knowing the domain, what questions tell you whether the boundaries are right?

    2 min answer couplingcohesionboundariesreview
  4. Architecture Fundamentals intermediate

    Instagram served 14 million users with three engineers on Django and Postgres. What does that tell you about how to choose an architecture for a new product?

    2 min answer case-studyinstagramsimplicitypragmatism
  5. Architecture Patterns intermediate

    Design a URL shortener handling 100 million new links per month and 10 billion redirects. Where is the real difficulty?

    2 min answer system-designcachingscalingstorage
  6. Architecture Patterns intermediate Multiple choice

    Orders must trigger inventory reservation, a confirmation email, an analytics record and a fraud check. Queue, topic, or both — and what breaks if you choose wrong?

    2 min answer pubsubqueuesevent-drivencompeting-consumers
  7. Business Architecture intermediate

    A startup asks you to architect their product "to handle millions of users". They currently have none. What do you actually build?

    2 min answer time-to-marketpragmatismconstraintsproduct
  8. Circuit Breakers intermediate Multiple choice

    A team proposes circuit breakers on every downstream call. What would you add, and why is the breaker not the most important control?

    2 min answer circuit-breakerbulkheadisolationfallback
  9. Cloud Architecture intermediate

    A team tells you backups run nightly and are retained for 30 days. What is missing from that answer?

    2 min answer backupdisaster-recoveryverificationransomware
  10. Cloud Architecture intermediate Multiple choice

    A team wants to build a new internal API on serverless functions. It will serve steady traffic of about 200 requests per second during business hours. What do you advise?

    2 min answer serverlesscontainerscostdecision-making
  11. Architecture Communication intermediate

    In a design review, a respected senior engineer proposes an approach you believe is wrong. The room defers to them. How do you handle it?

    2 min answer communicationdisagreementinfluencereview
  12. Cost & FinOps intermediate

    Finance wants to cut cloud spend by committing to one-year and three-year reservations. What do you commit to, and what could go wrong?

    2 min answer finopscommitmentsreservationscost