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Architecture Crash Course for the Generative-AI Era Why architecture knowledge is the strongest weapon in the generative-AI era. A TOC-style guide to who this 80+ article series is for, how the categories.

1Which of the following is the most appropriate example of a One-way Door (irreversible) decision?

Explanation: Cloud vendor, language, and DB are textbook One-way Doors. Folder layout and libraries are Two-way Doors, so the standard move is to decide quickly and adjust on the fly.

→ Dig deeper: What an IT Architect Actually Does

What an IT Architect Actually Does What does an IT architect actually do? A non-specialist intro covering the role's variants, mindset, ADRs, One-way Door reasoning, and why this job's.

2For a team smaller than ~30 people, which overall structure is recommended?

Explanation: Going microservices below 30 engineers is over-engineering, as the Segment 2020 retro famously showed. Start with a modular monolith and split only when you genuinely need to.

→ Dig deeper: Software Architecture Overview

Software Architecture Overview The big picture of software architecture. The three patterns of monolith / modular monolith / microservices, recommended structure by scale, and the.

3Which consistency model fits a bank's account-balance display?

Explanation: Money math has zero tolerance for drift, so strong consistency is mandatory. A social-media feed, by contrast, is fine with eventual consistency.

→ Dig deeper: Transaction Design

Transaction Design: ACID, Saga and the Outbox Pattern ACID properties, isolation levels, distributed transactions, eventual consistency, Saga, Outbox, CAP theorem, and idempotency.

4What is the single biggest reason Passkeys (FIDO2/WebAuthn) are recommended?

Explanation: Passkeys use public-key crypto bound to the origin, so handing your credentials to a phishing site is structurally impossible.

→ Dig deeper: Authentication Design

[Security Architecture] Authentication Design Organizes the 3 auth factors, MFA, Passkey, SSO, social login, and IDaaS-selection axes. Practical-oriented modern authentication design that considers.

6Which non-functional requirement is the most important to define numerically?

Explanation: Performance, availability, and security must be quantified or you will catch fire later with "it's slow / it crashes". Industry standard is to agree on p95/p99.

→ Dig deeper: Non-Functional Requirements

Non-Functional Requirements - 'Don't Stop' Has No Price Tag Covers numerically defining availability, performance, scalability, operations, security, and migration. Explains IPA non-functional requirement grades.

7Which describes RBAC, ABAC, and ReBAC correctly?

Explanation: Role / Attribute / Relationship — match the initials. SaaS hierarchies (folders, parent/child) lean ReBAC, attribute-driven filtering lands on ABAC, and simple cases start with RBAC.

→ Dig deeper: Authorization & IAM

[Security Architecture] Authorization and IAM Covers the 3 models RBAC/ABAC/ReBAC, the least-privilege principle, IAM operation, Service Account management, and why machine permissions should be.

8Which is the right way to use REST / GraphQL / gRPC?

Explanation: Modern practice is to mix protocols by use case. There is no rule that one service speaks one protocol — outward REST + internal gRPC + UI GraphQL is a perfectly reasonable combo.

→ Dig deeper: API Design

API Design Basics — REST / GraphQL / gRPC / WebSocket Comparing the four API styles. When to use REST, GraphQL, gRPC, or WebSocket; versioning strategy, authentication methods, and rate-limit numerical.
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