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Quiz

2667 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 areas2667 Architecture Fundamentals81 Distributed Systems101 Data Architecture90 Cloud Architecture87 Networking86 API & Integration Architecture78 Reliability & Resilience88 Observability81 Performance & Capacity Engineering90 Security Architecture95 Cost Architecture & FinOps92 Business Architecture93 Architecture Communication91 Enterprise Architecture91 Legacy Modernization92 AI-Era Architecture86 Software Architecture & Engineering84 Architecture Patterns84 Architecture Decision-Making91 The Architect's Meta-Skills92 Delivery & Release Engineering93 Platform Engineering & Developer Experience92 Testing & Quality Architecture90 Data Platform Architecture88 Streaming & Real-Time Data93 Data Governance & Semantics81 Frontend & Experience Architecture91 Edge, Mobile & IoT88 Regulatory & Data Protection Architecture90 Assurance, Audit & Model Risk88
Difficulty Any beginner intermediate advanced

993 questions.

  1. Dead Letter Handling intermediate

    How should unprocessable messages be handled, and what makes dead-letter handling useful rather than a graveyard?

    2 min answer dead-letterpoison-messagesreplayvisibility
  2. Dead Letter Handling intermediate

    You find 40,000 messages in a dead letter queue, the oldest from seven months ago. Nobody knew. What do you fix?

    2 min answer messagingoperationsdata-loss
  3. Debugging Distributed Systems intermediate

    A deployment completes successfully. Twenty minutes later latency has tripled, but only on new instances. Diagnose.

    2 min answer deploymentcold-startdiagnosiscaching
  4. Architecture Decision-Making intermediate

    Security wants mandatory hardware keys for every login; the business says it will cost conversions. How do you resolve it architecturally rather than by picking a side?

    2 min answer securityusabilityriskauthentication
  5. Architecture Decision-Making intermediate

    The team can ship in six weeks with an approach that will need rework, or five months with one that will not. How do you decide, and what do you do either way?

    2 min answer technical-debtdeliverytrade-offssequencing
  6. Architecture Decision-Making intermediate Multiple choice

    When should a service call another synchronously, and when should it publish an event instead? Give me the deciding test, not a preference.

    2 min answer syncasynccouplingavailability
  7. Architecture Decision-Making intermediate

    You are reviewing a design for an internal tool with 200 users. It proposes Kubernetes, microservices, Kafka, a service mesh and CQRS. How do you handle the review?

    2 min answer over-engineeringreviewpragmatismgovernance
  8. Decision Practice intermediate

    A large organisation wants consistent architectural decision practice across many teams. What should be standardised and what should not?

    2 min answer decision-practicestandardisationautonomygovernance
  9. Decision Practice intermediate

    You join a team with no decision records. Significant choices are made in chat and nobody can explain why the system is shaped as it is. How do you introduce ADRs without it becoming process overhead?

    2 min answer adrdocumentationpracticeadoption
  10. Writing Decision Records intermediate

    A team writes architecture decision records that nobody reads. What makes an ADR useful, and what should it deliberately not contain?

    2 min answer linearadrdocumentationrationale
  11. Writing Decision Records intermediate

    A team writes decision records that nobody reads and that do not help when the decision is revisited years later. What is missing?

    2 min answer adrrationaleexpirywriting
  12. Writing Decision Records intermediate

    What makes an architecture decision record valuable two years later, and which parts do teams consistently omit?

    3 min answer adrdocumentationcontextdecision