Software Development and Design practice questions

GET

Why wrong: GET is safe (does not modify) and also idempotent. It does not satisfy the 'not safe' condition.

POST

Why wrong: POST is neither idempotent nor safe. Subsequent calls create new resources, so it fails both criteria.

Use a single try/except block to catch all exceptions without differentiation.

Why wrong: Better to catch specific exceptions for clarity.

Assume the request always succeeds; errors are rare.

Why wrong: Not defensive; errors should be anticipated.

Always parse the response body with json.loads() regardless of content type.

Why wrong: Should verify content type before parsing; may not be JSON on error.

open('config.json', 'r') as f:\n data = f.read()

Why wrong: Missing the 'with' keyword; syntax error.

with open('config.json', 'r') as f, data = f.read()

Why wrong: Syntax error; cannot assign variable inside with statement like that.

file = open('config.json', 'r')\ndata = file.read()\nfile.close()

Why wrong: This manually closes the file but does not guarantee closure if an exception occurs before file.close().

headers = {'Authorization': 'Token ' + token}\nresponse = requests.get(url, headers=headers)

Why wrong: Should be 'Bearer' not 'Token'.

response = requests.get(url, headers={'Authorization': token})

Why wrong: Missing 'Bearer ' prefix.

response = requests.get(url, auth=('Bearer', token))

Why wrong: auth parameter is for basic authentication, not bearer tokens.

git rebase main

Why wrong: Missing fetch; need to fetch latest main first. But the command itself is correct if main is up-to-date, but typically you'd fetch first.

git merge main

Why wrong: Merge creates a merge commit, which is not desired here.

git checkout main && git pull && git checkout feature-login && git merge main

Why wrong: This creates a merge commit.

204 No Content

Why wrong: 204 No Content is for successful DELETE or PUT that returns no body.

301 Moved Permanently

Why wrong: 301 is a redirect status code.

200 OK

Why wrong: 200 OK is for successful GET, PUT, PATCH, or DELETE without creation.

tuple

Why wrong: Tuple is ordered and allows duplicates.

list

Why wrong: List is ordered and allows duplicates.

dict

Why wrong: Dict is an associative array, not a collection of unique elements.

*kwargs

Why wrong: Invalid syntax; single star is for positional arguments.

*args

Why wrong: *args collects positional arguments into a tuple.

&kwargs

Why wrong: Invalid Python syntax.

Changes require rebuilding the entire application.

Why wrong: Microservices can be updated independently.

The entire application is deployed as a single unit.

Why wrong: This describes a monolith.

All services share the same database.

Why wrong: Microservices often have their own databases (database per service).

[x*2 for x in range(11) if x % 2 == 0]

Why wrong: Multiplies by 2, not square.

[x**2 for x in range(10) if x % 2]

Why wrong: if x % 2 catches odd numbers (non-zero), not even.

[x**2 for x in range(10) if x % 2 == 0]

Why wrong: Missing 10 in range; range(10) goes 0-9.

json.dumps()

Why wrong: dumps converts Python object to JSON string.

json.load()

Why wrong: load reads from a file.

json.dump()

Why wrong: dump writes to a file.

Model

Why wrong: Model manages data and business logic, not user input.

Router

Why wrong: Router is not part of MVC; it's for URL routing.

View

Why wrong: View displays data, does not handle input directly.

A list of files changed in the last commit

Why wrong: That would be git show --stat or similar.

The branches and their latest commits

Why wrong: That's git branch -v.

The differences between the working directory and the last commit

Why wrong: That's git diff.

The request was malformed.

Why wrong: 400 Bad Request.

The resource was not found.

Why wrong: 404 Not Found.

The update failed due to a server error.

Why wrong: 5xx indicates server error.

Rebase-only

Why wrong: Not a branching strategy, just a workflow preference.

Merge avoidance

Why wrong: Not a standard branching strategy.

Direct commit to main

Why wrong: Generally discouraged; not a strategy.

Eliminates the need for message brokers

Why wrong: Event-driven often relies on message brokers (e.g., Kafka, RabbitMQ).

Simpler debugging due to synchronous communication

Why wrong: Event-driven is asynchronous, which can be harder to debug.

try:\n x = 1/0\nexcept ZeroDivisionError, e:\n print(e)

Why wrong: Obsolete comma syntax removed in Python 3.

try:\n x = 1/0\nexcept (ZeroDivisionError, TypeError) as e:\n print(e)

Why wrong: Invalid: tuple of exceptions with `as` is not valid syntax.

try:\n x = 1/0\nexcept:\n print('error')

Why wrong: Invalid: bare `except:` is not considered a valid exception handling statement.

for i, hostname in enumerate(hostnames): print(hostname)

Why wrong: The `enumerate()` function returns both an index and the element, but the stem requires only processing each hostname, not tracking its position. The extra index variable `i` is unnecessary overhead for simple iteration. This structure is tempting because `enumerate()` is the correct choice when the loop body needs the index for operations like modifying the list in-place or correlating with a parallel list.

while len(hostnames) > 0: print(hostnames.pop())

Why wrong: Destructive and inefficient; modifies the list.

for i in range(len(hostnames)): print(hostnames[i])

Why wrong: While functional, it is less Pythonic and requires indexing.

config.setdefault('timeout', 30)

Why wrong: setdefault() adds the key with default value if missing, no error.

config.get('timeout')

Why wrong: The .get() method safely returns None if key is absent.

config.pop('timeout', None)

Why wrong: pop() with default returns None if key missing, no error.

params=payload

Why wrong: params= is for query parameters in the URL, not the request body.

files=payload

Why wrong: files= is for multipart file uploads.

data=json.dumps(payload)

Why wrong: data= sends raw data and requires manual JSON serialization and header setting.