Technical study guides on software development, architecture, and more
Core SDLC concepts and methodologies
Core SDLC phases from planning through maintenance, CI/CD best practices, and modern development principles for delivering quality software.
Read study guide →Comprehensive comparison of software development methodologies including Waterfall, Agile (Scrum, Kanban, XP), Lean, DevOps, and specialized approaches with guidance on selection.
Read study guide →Comprehensive guide to Shape Up methodology - Basecamp's approach to product development featuring six-week cycles, shaping, betting, and building phases.
Read study guide →Modern team structures and collaboration patterns for software development, including domain-driven design, feature teams, and architectural governance.
Read study guide →CI/CD, deployment automation, and security integration
CI/CD fundamentals, pipeline design, automation strategies, security gates, testing approaches, and deployment workflows for modern software delivery.
Read study guide →DevSecOps philosophy and practices for making security everyone's responsibility throughout the SDLC, including shift-left security, security culture, and collaborative security practices.
Read study guide →Guiding discipline for architects: Align-Agree-Apply
A guiding discipline for architects that emphasizes human connection, shared agreement, and value delivery - transcending any specific SDLC methodology.
Read study guide →Understand the problem before committing to a solution.
Read study guide →Design the solution and secure commitment to the approach.
Read study guide →Execute with discipline while maintaining alignment.
Read study guide →Core concepts and principles of software architecture
Architectural styles from monolithic to distributed
Decision-making, leadership, and architecture governance
Master architect responsibilities, decision-making frameworks, ADRs, risk management, team leadership, and navigating organizational politics for effective technical leadership.
Read study guide →Principles, processes, and practices for governing software architecture decisions and ensuring alignment with business objectives
Read study guide →Enterprise architecture frameworks and governance approaches - when to use them and why
Read study guide →Practical tools and automation for implementing architecture governance - AWS, .NET, IaC, and security
Read study guide →Component design and risk analysis
Visual modeling and diagramming techniques
Architectural and design patterns for distributed systems
Essential patterns for distributed service communication including load balancing, pub/sub, request-reply, circuit breaker, and retry strategies.
Read study guide →Reliable messaging patterns including transactional outbox/inbox, saga pattern, event sourcing, and message versioning for distributed systems.
Read study guide →Distributed coordination patterns including leader election, distributed locks, consensus algorithms, and managing shared resources across multiple nodes.
Read study guide →Compare centralized orchestration vs distributed choreography for coordinating complex business processes across multiple services with trade-offs and implementation patterns.
Read study guide →Essential integration patterns for connecting systems including pipes and filters, API gateway, service mesh, and data transformation strategies.
Read study guide →Database patterns for distributed systems including database-per-service, CQRS, event sourcing, saga pattern, and handling data consistency challenges.
Read study guide →Optimize system performance and scale with patterns for caching, throttling, load shedding, horizontal/vertical scaling, and partitioning strategies.
Read study guide →Build resilient systems with circuit breakers, retries, bulkheads, health checks, and graceful degradation patterns for handling failures.
Read study guide →Infrastructure patterns including sidecar, ambassador, anti-corruption layer, blue-green deployment, and canary releases for robust deployment strategies.
Read study guide →Safely modernize legacy systems with strangler fig pattern, anti-corruption layer, branch by abstraction, and gradual migration strategies.
Read study guide →Database fundamentals, data processing, and modern data architectures
Cost analysis, ROI, and financial aspects of architecture
Understanding and calculating the complete cost of technology solutions over their entire lifecycle, including hidden costs and optimization strategies.
Read study guide →Measuring financial returns from technology investments, including ROI calculation methods, benefit quantification, and decision frameworks for architecture decisions.
Read study guide →Core security concepts and principles
Master fundamental security concepts including the CIA triad, defense-in-depth principles, trust models, and security-by-design practices for building secure systems.
Read study guide →Comprehensive overview of security frameworks including NIST CSF 2.0, OWASP standards, ISO 27000 series, CIS Controls, and MITRE ATT&CK.
Read study guide →Practical security best practices covering network segmentation, endpoint protection, IAM, data encryption, application security, and 2025 security trends.
Read study guide →Understanding and defending against security threats
Explore threat actor classifications from script kiddies to nation-states, vulnerability management with CVE and CVSS, and risk assessment methodologies.
Read study guide →Understand contemporary cyber threats including social engineering, phishing variants, injection attacks, advanced persistent threats, and ransomware with prevention strategies.
Read study guide →Implement defense-in-depth strategies, zero trust architecture principles, access control models, and network security fundamentals for comprehensive protection.
Read study guide →Securing applications and data
Comprehensive guide to secure development lifecycle, threat modeling methodologies including STRIDE and PASTA, and essential secure coding practices for robust applications.
Read study guide →Comprehensive coverage of data classification, encryption for data at rest/in transit/in use, privacy regulations like GDPR and HIPAA, and data loss prevention strategies.
Read study guide →Master security testing methodologies including SAST, DAST, IAST, penetration testing phases, and vulnerability assessment techniques for comprehensive application security.
Read study guide →Compliance, incident response, and governance
Essential framework for risk management, compliance standards like SOX and PCI DSS, security auditing processes, and continuous monitoring strategies.
Read study guide →Learn the NIST incident response lifecycle including preparation, detection, containment, eradication, recovery, and post-incident analysis with team structure and communication strategies.
Read study guide →Explore security challenges in AI/ML, cloud computing, IoT devices, blockchain smart contracts, and quantum computing's impact on cryptography.
Read study guide →Comprehensive catalog of security assessment tools, vulnerability scanners, SIEM platforms, threat intelligence resources, and compliance automation tools.
Read study guide →Core data structures and complexity analysis
Build practical intuition for algorithm complexity from O(1) to O(2ⁿ), with rules for analysis, space complexity fundamentals, and common misconceptions debunked.
Read study guide →Deep dive into mathematical foundations of algorithm analysis covering Big O, Omega, and Theta notations with detailed examples and practical analysis techniques.
Read study guide →Quick reference for time and space complexity of common data structures, algorithms, and operations with practical guidelines for algorithm selection and performance optimization.
Read study guide →Practical guide for choosing the right data structure and algorithm for your problem, comparing interview practices with production best practices.
Read study guide →Master four fundamental algorithm design approaches: dynamic programming, greedy algorithms, divide-and-conquer, and backtracking with practical examples and complexity analysis.
Read study guide →Arrays, lists, stacks, and queues
Master static and dynamic arrays with O(1) access, amortized analysis, common techniques like two pointers and sliding window, and essential interview problems.
Read study guide →Learn singly and doubly linked lists with implementations, time complexity analysis, and common interview problems including cycle detection and reversal.
Read study guide →Master stack (LIFO) and queue (FIFO) data structures with implementations, common applications like BFS, and variations including priority queues and circular queues.
Read study guide →Tree structures and heap-based data structures
Learn tree fundamentals including terminology, types, traversal methods, and why trees enable logarithmic time operations for hierarchical data structures.
Read study guide →Comprehensive guide to binary search trees covering implementation, traversal algorithms, search operations, and understanding when to use tree structures.
Read study guide →Master advanced tree structures including tries for prefix matching, segment trees, balanced trees like AVL and Red-Black, and specialized applications.
Read study guide →Learn heap data structure properties, heapify operations, priority queue implementations, and applications from task scheduling to finding top-K elements.
Read study guide →Graph structures and algorithms
Foundation of graph theory covering terminology, representations, graph types, and basic traversal concepts for modeling complex relationships and networks.
Read study guide →Complete guide to graphs covering representations, traversal algorithms (BFS/DFS), and applications from social networks to pathfinding problems.
Read study guide →Advanced graph algorithms including Dijkstra's shortest path, topological sorting, minimum spanning trees, and network flow problems with practical implementations.
Read study guide →Hashing, searching, sorting, and recursion
Master hash tables with O(1) average lookups, collision resolution strategies, hash function design, and practical applications from caching to frequency counting.
Read study guide →Compare linear and binary search algorithms with complexity analysis, when to use each approach, and implementing efficient search strategies.
Read study guide →Comprehensive guide to sorting algorithms from bubble sort to quick sort, with complexity comparisons, stability analysis, and practical selection criteria.
Read study guide →Master recursive thinking with base cases, recursive cases, common patterns, memoization techniques, and converting between recursive and iterative solutions.
Read study guide →Core OOP concepts and principles
Master the four pillars of object-oriented programming: abstraction, encapsulation, inheritance, and polymorphism with practical C# examples and modern best practices.
Read study guide →Deep dive into SOLID principles: Single Responsibility, Open/Closed, Liskov Substitution, Interface Segregation, and Dependency Inversion with practical examples.
Read study guide →Modern OOP practices including composition over inheritance, dependency injection, immutability, functional programming concepts, and avoiding common antipatterns.
Read study guide →Quick reference guide to all design patterns organized by category with purpose, use cases, and practical guidance for pattern selection.
Read study guide →Common design patterns and their applications
Creational design patterns including Builder, Factory Method, Abstract Factory, Singleton, and Prototype with modern C# implementations and best practices.
Read study guide →Structural design patterns including Adapter, Bridge, Composite, Decorator, Facade, Flyweight, and Proxy for flexible object composition.
Read study guide →Behavioral design patterns for object communication including Observer, Strategy, Command, Template Method, Chain of Responsibility, and State patterns.
Read study guide →Functional error handling pattern replacing exceptions with explicit Result types, making failure cases clear and composable for robust C# applications.
Read study guide →System monitoring and observability fundamentals
Core networking concepts for developers
IaC fundamentals, tools, patterns, and best practices
Core IaC concepts including declarative vs. imperative approaches, idempotency, immutability, and why IaC matters for modern infrastructure.
Read study guide →Comprehensive comparison of IaC tools including CloudFormation, Terraform, Pulumi, Ansible, and others to help choose the right tool for your needs.
Read study guide →Modular design, environment separation, layered architecture, and GitOps workflow patterns for organizing IaC code effectively.
Read study guide →Understanding infrastructure state, remote backends, state locking, and best practices for managing IaC state across teams.
Read study guide →Managing environment recreation, resource discovery, and handling mutable vs. immutable identifiers when recreating infrastructure.
Read study guide →Static analysis, unit testing, integration testing, and compliance testing strategies for infrastructure code.
Read study guide →Enforcing tagging standards, automated drift detection, compliance monitoring, and governance at scale using AWS Config, Organizations, and automation.
Read study guide →AWS CloudFormation for infrastructure as code
Core CloudFormation concepts including stacks, templates, resources, and basic workflow for managing AWS infrastructure as code.
Read study guide →Complete reference for CloudFormation intrinsic functions, parameters, outputs, mappings, and conditions with practical examples.
Read study guide →Change sets, nested stacks, StackSets, custom resources, drift detection, and best practices for production CloudFormation deployments.
Read study guide →Complete guide for migrating resources to CloudFormation: importing unmanaged resources, moving resources between stacks, and stack refactoring with the latest AWS solutions.
Read study guide →Deployment strategies, disaster recovery, and operational resilience
Deployment strategies define how new versions of applications are released to production environments. Learn about Rolling, Blue-Green, Canary, A/B Testing deployments, and Chaos Engineering.
Read study guide →Business continuity strategies from backup-and-restore to multi-site hot-standby, comparing RTO/RPO requirements, costs, and implementation approaches for disaster recovery.
Read study guide →Search engine optimization and web best practices
Core ML concepts and techniques
Comprehensive ML fundamentals covering supervised/unsupervised learning, model training, neural networks, MLOps practices, and 2025 industry trends.
Read study guide →Generative AI including popular tools, prompt engineering techniques, transformer architectures, RAG systems, and practical integration strategies for 2025.
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