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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

6 questions in Sync vs Async.

  1. Sync vs Async advanced

    A checkout flow makes 9 synchronous calls: inventory, pricing, tax, fraud, payment, loyalty, shipping, notification and analytics. What would you change?

    2 min answer checkoutcouplingavailabilitylatency
  2. Sync vs Async intermediate

    A team debates whether an operation should be synchronous or asynchronous. What decides it, and what is the cost of getting it wrong in each direction?

    2 min answer linearsyncasyncuser-experience
  3. Sync vs Async beginner

    A team moves a slow 800 ms enrichment call out of the request path onto a queue. Request p99 drops immediately, total system throughput does not improve, and the time until the user sees the enriched result gets worse. Why does the queue not reduce the work?

    3 min answer asyncqueuesthroughputlittles-law
  4. Sync vs Async advanced

    An order API calls six services synchronously and takes 3 seconds at p95, failing whenever any dependency is degraded. Redesign it.

    2 min answer asyncavailabilityeventsoutbox
  5. Sync vs Async intermediate Multiple choice

    Order service must notify inventory, billing and notifications when an order is placed. Synchronous calls or events? Justify.

    2 min answer couplingmessagingdesign
  6. Sync vs Async intermediate

    Where should the boundary between synchronous and asynchronous processing sit in an API platform, and what determines it?

    2 min answer syncasynclatencyacknowledgement