Consistency vs Availability: In distributed systems, you have to choose between?

Short answer: consistency and availability (as per the CAP theorem). Ensuring data consistency while maintaining service availability can become a tricky balancing act.

Real-world example (ShopNest)

ShopNest splits Catalog, Cart, Order, and Payment into services so teams can deploy catalog changes without redeploying payments.

Say this in the interview

1. Define — one clear sentence (the short answer above).
2. Example — relate it to a project like ShopNest or your real work.
3. Trade-off — when you would not use it.