Talking About It

Be able to give it in three lengths. Thirty seconds: the problem, what you built, one interesting thing. Two minutes: add the architecture and one hard decision. Ten minutes: a demo, with the code open, walking through one request end to end.

That last one is the real test, and it is worth rehearsing once out loud. Explaining a request from the click, through the API, into the database and back, is the clearest demonstration that you understand your own system rather than having assembled it.

Prepare for the questions that will come. Why this stack? What was the hardest part? What would you do with another month? How would this handle a thousand times more users? What is the worst code in it, and why is it still there?

Honest answers to all five are more impressive than a defensive answer to any one. 'This query would be the first thing to fall over, and here is where I would put the index' is a better answer than claiming it would be fine.