Engineering Practices

Part of the Interview Prep Roadmap. Coverage ratings are explained there.

Version Control (Git)

The basic commit/push/pull workflow, then collaborating through branches and merges.

Coverage: thin

Resources · Learn Git Branching — interactive, the fastest way to build a mental model · Pro Git — the free official book

Git Fundamentals

• Repositories, commits, and the staging area
• Working directory, index, and HEAD
• Cloning and remotes

Everyday Workflow

• Staging and committing
• Push and pull
• Fetch vs. pull
• History and diffs

Practice

• git fetch vs. git pull — Therap, with answer
• Getting in sync with a collaborator — Brain Station 23

Branching & Collaboration

• Creating and switching branches
• Merging and merge conflicts
• Rebasing vs. merging
• Pull requests and code review

Undoing Changes

• Revert and reset
• Stashing
• Cherry-picking

Testing & Code Quality

What unit testing is and who's responsible for writing it, then what makes code maintainable.

Coverage: thin

Resources · Refactoring.Guru — code smells

Testing Fundamentals

• Purpose of automated testing
• Unit, integration, and end-to-end tests
• Ownership of each test type
• Coverage and its limits

Practice

• Who writes unit tests — Brain Station 23, with answer

Writing Good Tests

• Arrange-act-assert structure
• Mocks, stubs, and fakes
• Test-driven development
• Edge and boundary cases

Code Quality

• Readability and naming
• Code smells and refactoring
• DRY, KISS, and YAGNI
• Code review practices

SDLC, Agile & Process

The software development lifecycle, then Agile and where sprints fit into it.

Coverage: thin

Resources · The Agile Manifesto — four principles, one page

Software Development Lifecycle

• Phases from requirements through maintenance
• Waterfall model
• Iterative and incremental models

Practice

• The phases of the SDLC — Green University
• Which model iterates development and testing — Brain Station 23, with answer
• SDLC models, and the waterfall model — REVE Systems

Agile

• Agile principles
• Scrum: sprints, standups, retrospectives, roles
• Kanban
• Agile vs. waterfall trade-offs

Practice

• Explain the Agile model — REVE Systems
• The purpose of a sprint — Brain Station 23, with answer
• Agile vs. waterfall — World University

Delivery Practices

• Continuous integration and continuous delivery
• Release and deployment strategies
• Estimation and planning

Practice

• How CI/CD pipelines work — Astha IT

REST APIs & Microservices

RESTful API design basics, then splitting a system into services.

Coverage: thin

Resources · REST API Tutorial · Microservices — martinfowler.com

API Fundamentals

• Client-server model
• HTTP methods and status codes
• Request and response structure
• Idempotency

Practice

• REST APIs, HTTP verbs, PUT vs. POST — REVE Systems
• Idempotent vs. non-idempotent requests — ShellBeeHaken
• Write a health-check API call — WellDev

REST Design

• Resource modeling and URI design
• Statelessness
• Versioning
• Pagination, filtering, and sorting
• REST vs. GraphQL vs. RPC

Practice

• How many APIs a booking flow needs — WellDev

Microservices

• Monolith vs. microservices
• Service boundaries
• Inter-service communication
• Service discovery and API gateways
• Distributed data and eventual consistency