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Study Notebook / 00

Question Bank

253 prompts pulled from notebooks 01 to 09, answers at the back

How to use this book

This is not a book to read. Every prompt in it already appears inside a notebook, next to the passage that answers it, which is exactly why answering it there proves very little. You do not have a knowledge problem. You have a recall-under-pressure problem, and the only thing that fixes it is being asked cold.

Each prompt carries the notebook and section it came from, printed small beside its number, so a blank is never a dead end.

Of the 300 prompts, 97 came from an Interviewer asks block and have a written answer in the last part, under the same number. The rest are self-graded: the section named beside the prompt is the answer.

Part 01 · Large-Scale Data Ingestion

1Opening

Part 01 · Large-Scale Data Ingestion

2Framing the problem

Part 01 · Large-Scale Data Ingestion

3Ingestion, getting the bytes in

Part 01 · Large-Scale Data Ingestion

4The handoff

Part 01 · Large-Scale Data Ingestion

5The queue

Part 01 · Large-Scale Data Ingestion

6Processing

Part 01 · Large-Scale Data Ingestion

7State and visibility

Part 01 · Large-Scale Data Ingestion

8Senior concerns

Part 01 · Large-Scale Data Ingestion

9The interview itself

Part 01 · Large-Scale Data Ingestion

10Final review

Part 02 · Object Storage

11Opening

Part 02 · Object Storage

12The naive design, and the seven ways it dies

Part 02 · Object Storage

13Three kinds of storage

Part 02 · Object Storage

14Anatomy of an object

Part 02 · Object Storage

15Inside the system

Part 02 · Object Storage

16Getting the bytes in

Part 02 · Object Storage

17Large files

Part 02 · Object Storage

18Getting the bytes out

Part 02 · Object Storage

19Final review

Part 03 · Full-Stack Code Review

20Opening

Part 03 · Full-Stack Code Review

21How to review code out loud

Part 03 · Full-Stack Code Review

22The Node.js runtime

Part 03 · Full-Stack Code Review

23Express and the HTTP boundary

Part 03 · Full-Stack Code Review

24The client: React and Redux

Part 03 · Full-Stack Code Review

25PostgreSQL

Part 03 · Full-Stack Code Review

26MongoDB

Part 03 · Full-Stack Code Review

27Kafka

Part 03 · Full-Stack Code Review

28Twenty-four more drills

Part 03 · Full-Stack Code Review

29Delivery

Part 04 · Postgres

30Opening

Part 04 · Postgres

31Why a database at all

Part 04 · Postgres

32Types are the first constraint

Part 04 · Postgres

33Designing the schema

Part 04 · Postgres

34Querying for an API

Part 04 · Postgres

35Making it fast

Part 04 · Postgres

36Correctness under concurrency

Part 04 · Postgres

37Final review

Part 05 · Backend Security

38Opening

Part 05 · Backend Security

39Injection

Part 05 · Backend Security

40Authentication

Part 05 · Backend Security

41Authorization

Part 05 · Backend Security

42The browser is a boundary too

Part 05 · Backend Security

43Final review

Part 06 · Scaling and Performance

44What "fast" means

Part 06 · Scaling and Performance

45Finding the bottleneck

Part 06 · Scaling and Performance

46The database

Part 06 · Scaling and Performance

47Caching

Part 06 · Scaling and Performance

48More machines

Part 06 · Scaling and Performance

49The stateful part

Part 06 · Scaling and Performance

50Moving work in space and time

Part 06 · Scaling and Performance

51Architecture decisions

Part 06 · Scaling and Performance

52The interview

Part 06 · Scaling and Performance

53Final review

Part 07 · Real-Time Backends

54Opening

Part 07 · Real-Time Backends

55The client always spoke first

Part 07 · Real-Time Backends

56Server-sent events: the response that never ends

Part 07 · Real-Time Backends

57WebSocket: leaving HTTP behind

Part 07 · Real-Time Backends

58How many connections fit on one machine

Part 07 · Real-Time Backends

59The connection is state

Part 07 · Real-Time Backends

60Delivery: gaps, storms and fan-out

Part 07 · Real-Time Backends

61The parts the lecture left out

Part 07 · Real-Time Backends

62Final review

Part 08 · REST API Design

63Opening

Part 08 · REST API Design

64The standard exists so you do not have to negotiate

Part 08 · REST API Design

65Resources, and the URL that names them

Part 08 · REST API Design

66The method is a promise about repeating

Part 08 · REST API Design

67The response is the other half of the interface

Part 08 · REST API Design

68The list endpoint is where APIs go wrong

Part 08 · REST API Design

69When CRUD runs out

Part 08 · REST API Design

70Consistency is the whole product

Part 08 · REST API Design

71The interview itself

Part 08 · REST API Design

72Final review

Part 09 · Design Principles

73Opening

Part 09 · Design Principles

74The words that came before the acronym

Part 09 · Design Principles

75The five

Part 09 · Design Principles

76Using them without being used by them

Part 09 · Design Principles

77The interview itself

Part 10 · Caching

78Opening

Part 10 · Caching

79Caching is a bet about staleness

Part 10 · Caching

80Where caches live

Part 10 · Caching

81The strategies

Part 10 · Caching

82Invalidation

Part 10 · Caching

83The failure modes

Part 10 · Caching

84Telling someone else's cache what to do

Part 10 · Caching

85Redis in practice

Part 10 · Caching

86The interview itself

Part 10 · Caching

87Final review

10 more sections

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