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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. Branching Models intermediate Multiple choice

    A platform with many teams and frequent releases must choose a branching model. What decides it?

    1 min answer branchingtrunk-basedrelease-branchesprerequisites
  2. Branching Models intermediate Multiple choice

    A product ships versioned software that customers install and run themselves. Three major versions are under support and security fixes must reach all of them. Which branching model fits?

    2 min answer branchingrelease-branchestrunk-basedsupported-versions
  3. Branching Models intermediate

    Sixty engineers work on branches that live five days on average before merging. Estimate what that lifetime costs per year, and say which assumption dominates the error.

    3 min answer branchingtrunk-basedmerge-conflictsrework
  4. Build Reproducibility intermediate

    A build produced a different artefact from the same commit two weeks apart. Why does that matter, and what makes builds reproducible?

    2 min answer postmanreproducibilityprovenancedependencies
  5. Build Reproducibility intermediate

    A team proposes making every build hermetic - pinned toolchains and dependencies, no network access during the build, byte-identical output from the same commit. What does that buy and what does it cost?

    3 min answer build-reproducibilityhermetic-buildssupply-chaincaching
  6. Build Reproducibility intermediate Multiple choice

    A team wants the same commit to produce a bit-identical container image on any machine, any day. Which single change contributes most?

    3 min answer reproducibilitypinningdigestsdeterminism
  7. Build Reproducibility intermediate

    Your pipeline builds a container image from a tagged commit. Rebuilding the same tag two weeks later produces a different digest. The application behaves identically. Where does the difference come from, and which parts should you fix?

    3 min answer reproducibilitydeterminismtimestampsdigests
  8. Build vs Buy intermediate Multiple choice

    A platform must decide whether to build or buy a capability. What is the primary test, and what is the pattern that usually works?

    2 min answer build-vs-buydifferentiationceilingdata
  9. Build vs Buy intermediate

    A team proposes building an authentication service rather than buying one, arguing it is two weeks of work. Respond.

    2 min answer decisioncostsecurity
  10. Build vs Buy intermediate

    How do you decide whether to build or buy a capability, and what makes the decision reversible?

    2 min answer build-vs-buydifferentiationexit-costtco
  11. Build vs Buy intermediate

    In February 2022 Akamai announced it would acquire Linode for about $900 million and closed the deal in March 2022 at a purchase price of $898.8 million, adding an infrastructure-as-a-service business to a company that already ran one of the largest edge delivery networks. Akamai had the network, the capital and the engineers to build compute. What made buying the right call, and where would copying this be a mistake?

    3 min answer akamailinodebuild-vs-buyacquisition
  12. Build vs Buy intermediate

    What evidence should drive a build-versus-buy decision, and which arguments on each side are usually made badly?

    2 min answer build-vs-buydifferentiationtcovendor