Today · Monday 19 October 2026

Day 24 · Week 4 · Phase 1 — Orchestrator-workers, AI-assisted dev, stack — interview-1

Planned 120 min · 0/4 done · Week page

Tasks

• System Design · 45 min · Interview framework refresh: practise requirements + estimation opening for 'design Pastebin' in 10 min, recorded → Interview framework & back-of-envelope estimation · resource w04-sd-1
• DSA · 25 min · Valid Parentheses + Min Stack → Stack & monotonic stack · resource w04-dsa-1
• Python · 20 min · Rep: asyncio.Semaphore + bounded queue for backpressure on concurrent LLM calls → asyncio in depth: TaskGroups, cancellation, backpressure w04-py-1
• Communication · 30 min · Grammar: Conditionals and modals for hedging and softening → Week 04 drills · day 1 w04-comm-1

Catch-up (unfinished from the last 7 days)

• DSA · 30 min · Sliding Window Maximum (monotonic deque) → Sliding window · resource · from 2026-10-17 w03-dsa-5
• Java/Spring AI · 30 min · Spring AI advisors: SimpleLoggerAdvisor + MessageChatMemoryAdvisor; write a custom advisor that redacts emails from prompts → Spring AI 2.0 fundamentals: ChatClient, advisors, structured output · resource · from 2026-10-17 w03-java-2
• Communication · 30 min · Record & shadow: Intonation for emphasis and questions → Week 03 drills · day 6 · from 2026-10-17 w03-comm-6
• System Design · 45 min · Written design: public API for the capstone — REST + SSE streaming, idempotent ticket creation, cursor pagination, versioning, error model → API design: REST, gRPC, GraphQL, idempotency, pagination · from 2026-10-18 w03-sd-3
• Architecture · 30 min · Write ADR 003 for capstone: LLM provider abstraction via Protocol-based adapter (vs LiteLLM-only) → Design patterns that still matter (GoF, modern) · resource · from 2026-10-18 w03-arch-2
• Staff+ · 30 min · Read a good design doc structure (context, goals/non-goals, alternatives, risks) and draft a template for docs/log/design-doc-template.md → Design docs & RFCs that get approved · resource · from 2026-10-18 w03-staff-1
• Communication · 30 min · Soft skills + weekly review: Receiving feedback without defensiveness → Week 03 drills · day 7 · from 2026-10-18 w03-comm-7
• Review · 60 min · Retro week 1-3 + flashcards: context engineering vocabulary (compaction, JIT retrieval, tool budget); explain-it-back sliding window invariant → Context engineering · from 2026-10-18 w03-rev-1

Today's digest

Latest: Day −1 — Orientation: the 2026 landscape in five reads — read it on the digest page.

Daily routine

1. Skim the digest and the feed — 10 min max.
2. Do the tasks above in order; timebox each.
3. Answer 3 questions from today's topic out loud (explain-it-back).
4. Tick boxes in today's GitHub issue Day N and close it — progress syncs automatically.

Generated 2026-10-19 05:05 UTC by scripts/gen_today.py.