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126 questions, 454 terms and 400 topics in 20 areas.
8 results for “Pragmatism”
Pragmatism
Preferring the simplest architecture that satisfies the requirements, and treating additional structure as a cost that must be justified.
Constraint Thinking
Designing for the budget, timeline, skills, regulations and existing estate that actually exist, rather than for the ones a textbook assumes.
Instagram's Early Scaling
Instagram reached tens of millions of users on Django and PostgreSQL with a handful of engineers, by deliberately choosing boring technology and doing the simple thing first.
A board mandate says "implement zero trust in twelve months". What do you actually do, in what order?
First, reframe the mandate Zero trust is not a project with an end date; it is a posture reached incrementally. A twelve month programme promising completion wi
A startup asks you to architect their product "to handle millions of users". They currently have none. What do you actually build?
What the interviewer is testing Whether you can identify the real constraint. The stated requirement is scale; the actual constraint is survival, and an archite
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?
What the interviewer is testing Whether you can identify the binding constraint. For most products it is not traffic. What Instagram actually did Their 2011 pos
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?
What the interviewer is testing Judgement, and whether you can push back without alienating a team. Anyone can spot over engineering; the question is what you d