Architectural Concepts that Every Software Developer should know.

1. Load Balancer

Distributes incoming traffic across multiple servers to ensure no single server gets overwhelmed.

2. Caching

Stores frequently accessed data in memory to reduce latency.

3. Content Delivery Network (CDN)

Stores static assets across globally distributed edge locations or servers so users download the content from the nearest location

4. Message Queue

Decouples components by letting producers enqueue messages that consumers process asynchronously.

5. Publish-Subscribe

Enables multiple consumers to receive messages from a topic

6. API Gateway

Acts as a single entry point for client requests, handling routing, authentication, rate limiting and protocol translation

7. Circuit Breaker

Prevents a system from repeatedly calling a failing service by temporarily stopping requests until the service recovers.

8. Service Discovery

Automatically tracks available service instances, enabling components to discover and communicate with each other dynamically.

9. Sharding

Sharding splits large datasets across multiple nodes using a shard key to improve scalability and performance.

10. Rate Limiting

Rate limiting controls how many requests a client can make within a time window to prevent service overload.

11. Consistent Hashing

Consistent hashing is a data distribution technique that minimizes data movement when nodes join or leave the system.

12. Auto Scaling

Auto scaling automatically adds or removes compute resources based on demand or predefined metrics.