I don't know why you assume I was rude about it. I phrased it all equivalently to how you said. A lot of my background was in tech services so I'm very well practiced in asking these kind of questions. They pretty much waved off all of them saying it wasn't relevant.
> They pretty much waved off all of them saying it wasn't relevant.
Well, if they are asking how to build a highly scaleable system, then statements about how to build a not highly scaleable system would not be relevant.
Context is still relevant though. "Highly Scalable" means something different if you're working on core AWS infra vs an app to be used by 100k people at the same time for instance.
I'd expect the interviewer to engage and set some helpful boundaries (and the interviewee if they have the experience to talk about what changes between the two situations)
