Ask HN: What are good software architecture interview questions?
For me, the single largest differentiation between &quot;senior programmer&quot; and &quot;software architect&quot; is whether or not they can see the actual problem. The catch phrase is &quot;see the forest for the trees&quot; but in software it is recognizing you&#x27;re in a forest and then understanding forest type issues. I was on a team that was nominally building a &quot;video encoding protocol&quot; because that is what they were asked for but the problem they were solving needed a remote procedure call protocol.<p>Happens all the time, a person wants to buy a waterproof computer, but really what they want is to see the results of a program while they are in a rainstorm. Or they want a &quot;website for managing inventory&quot; but they really want a way of tracking employee theft. So architects listen to the problem statement(s) and think about what is in play, will ask some clarifying questions and then reframe as the <i>actual</i> problem statement. A senior engineer will ask evaluation level questions (how fast, how much memory, etc) and come up respond with a solution to the stated problem.<p>A <i>bad</i> software architect will not be able to stop abstracting and will start with a 50,000&#x27; view and then float into orbit. A &quot;good&quot; software architect will add in the business or operational constraints to the problem and articulate where the ceiling is and why.