The Layer Just Below the Interview Loops
Loop Primitives
Each page starts with the idea, then the algorithm you could draw at a whiteboard, then just enough depth to answer the interviewer's next question.
All Loop Primitives (15)
LOOP PRIMITIVE #01Storage Engines & Data Partitioning
Write-Ahead Log, fsync & Group Commit
EC2EBSS3
Read Loop Primitive
LOOP PRIMITIVE #02Storage Engines & Data Partitioning
LSM-Trees & Compaction
Managed Service for Apache FlinkEMREC2
Read Loop Primitive
LOOP PRIMITIVE #03Distributed Coordination, Locks & Consensus
Leases, Fencing Tokens & Distributed Locks
DynamoDBS3SQS
Read Loop Primitive
LOOP PRIMITIVE #04Asynchronous Messaging & Event Systems
Idempotency & Effectively-Once Processing
DynamoDBSQSMSK
Read Loop Primitive
LOOP PRIMITIVE #05Asynchronous Messaging & Event Systems
Change Streams & the Transactional Outbox
DynamoDBKinesis Data StreamsLambda
Read Loop Primitive
LOOP PRIMITIVE #06Distributed Coordination, Locks & Consensus
Replication, Quorums & Read-Your-Writes
AuroraRDSDynamoDB
Read Loop Primitive
LOOP PRIMITIVE #07Asynchronous Messaging & Event Systems
Event Time, Watermarks & Checkpoints
Managed Service for Apache FlinkKinesis Data StreamsMSK
Read Loop Primitive
LOOP PRIMITIVE #08Storage Engines & Data Partitioning
Sharding, Hot Keys & Rebalancing
DynamoDBKinesis Data StreamsMSK
Read Loop Primitive
LOOP PRIMITIVE #09Resilience, Security & Multi-Region HA
Multi-Region Failover
Application Recovery ControllerRoute 53Global Accelerator
Read Loop Primitive
LOOP PRIMITIVE #10Resilience, Security & Multi-Region HA
Retries, Timeouts, Backpressure & Load Shedding
API GatewayApplication Load BalancerCloudFront
Read Loop Primitive
LOOP PRIMITIVE #11Storage Engines & Data Partitioning
Caching & Invalidation
ElastiCacheDynamoDB Accelerator (DAX)CloudFront
Read Loop Primitive
LOOP PRIMITIVE #12Asynchronous Messaging & Event Systems
Queues & Delivery Semantics
SQSSNSEventBridge
Read Loop Primitive
LOOP PRIMITIVE #13Distributed Coordination, Locks & Consensus
Distributed Transactions: Sagas vs Two-Phase Commit
Step FunctionsDynamoDBAurora
Read Loop Primitive
LOOP PRIMITIVE #14Ingress, Routing & Network Protocols
Rate Limiting Algorithms
API GatewayAWS WAFCloudFront
Read Loop Primitive
LOOP PRIMITIVE #15Storage Engines & Data Partitioning
Time-Series Storage & Roll-ups
CloudWatchManaged Service for PrometheusTimestream
Read Loop Primitive