Every technical term you need to know, explained clearly.
An Application Programming Interface is a set of protocols and tools that allows different software applications to communicate with each other. In interviews, you may be asked to design REST APIs, explain API versioning, or discuss rate limiting strategies.
A project management and software development methodology that emphasizes iterative delivery, cross-functional collaboration, and rapid response to change. Agile frameworks include Scrum, Kanban, and SAFe. Behavioral interviews often explore your experience with agile ceremonies, retrospectives, and handling changing requirements.
Continuous Integration and Continuous Delivery (or Deployment) is a set of practices that automate building, testing, and deploying code changes. CI ensures every commit is validated by automated tests, while CD automates the release pipeline. Interviewers often ask about pipeline design, rollback strategies, and deployment best practices.
A high-speed data storage layer that stores a subset of data so future requests can be served faster than accessing the primary data source. Caching strategies include write-through, write-back, and write-around. Interview questions often cover cache invalidation, eviction policies (LRU, LFU), and cache stampede prevention.
The systematic examination of source code by peers to find bugs, improve quality, and share knowledge. Effective code reviews focus on correctness, readability, performance, and adherence to coding standards. Interview questions may cover your code review process, how you give constructive feedback, and how you handle disagreements.
A platform for building, shipping, and running applications inside lightweight, portable containers. Containers package code with all dependencies, ensuring consistent environments from development to production. Interview topics include Dockerfile best practices, image layering, and container orchestration.
A data structure that improves the speed of data retrieval operations on a database table at the cost of additional storage and slower writes. Common types include B-tree, hash, and composite indexes. Interviewers ask about when to create indexes, covering indexes, and how to diagnose slow queries.
Reusable solutions to commonly occurring problems in software design. Categories include creational (Singleton, Factory), structural (Adapter, Decorator), and behavioral (Observer, Strategy). Interview questions may ask you to apply a pattern to a scenario or explain trade-offs between patterns.
Five object-oriented design principles: Single Responsibility, Open/Closed, Liskov Substitution, Interface Segregation, and Dependency Inversion. These principles guide developers in creating maintainable and extensible software. Interviewers may ask you to identify SOLID violations in code or refactor a class hierarchy using these principles.
A fixed-length iteration, typically one to four weeks, during which a development team works to complete a set of planned work items. Sprints include planning, daily standups, review, and retrospective ceremonies. Interviewers may ask about how you estimate story points, handle scope creep, or prioritize a sprint backlog.