General terms

58 terms of 1552 total · page 1 of 3

📖 Foundational concepts every developer needs in their toolkit

Some concepts underpin every language, framework, and paradigm in software development. This category captures the foundational vocabulary — from data types and memory models to recursion, abstraction, and computational complexity — that every developer needs regardless of their specialisation. If a term does not fit neatly elsewhere, it probably belongs here.

More on General history · 5 references · key concepts

History

General software development practices emerged from early computing in the 1950s–60s, when ad hoc approaches gave way to formal methodologies as systems grew in complexity. Key milestones include the 1968 NATO Software Engineering Conference, which established "software engineering" as a discipline, and the subsequent rise of structured programming in the 1970s–80s as a response to maintenance crises. The Agile Manifesto (2001) marked a shift toward iterative, human-centered practices, while the 2000s brought widespread adoption of code review, automated testing, and continuous integration as baseline standards. Today's landscape emphasizes developer experience, security-first design patterns (zero trust, defence in depth), and organizational practices like blameless culture and decision documentation, reflecting lessons learned from decades of scaling challenges and a recognition that software quality depends on both technical architecture and team dynamics.

Key concepts

Separation of Concerns
Single Responsibility Principle
Code Review
Refactoring
ACID Properties
Dependency Management Philosophy
Code Documentation

Best references

Design Patterns: Elements of Reusable Object-Oriented Software The canonical Gang of Four reference covering foundational patterns (Factory, Adapter, Observer, Singleton, Strategy, Decorator) that appear throughout this category.
OWASP Top 10 Web Application Security Risks Essential reference for input validation, attack surface, defence in depth, and penetration testing concepts covered in the security-related terms.
Release It!: Design and Deploy Production-Ready Software Authoritative guide on code freeze, release management, runbooks, and error recovery patterns in production environments.
Building Microservices: Designing Fine-Grained Systems Core reference for architectural patterns, separation of concerns, Conway's Law, and team structure (feature vs component teams).
Accelerate: The Science of Lean Software and DevOps Evidence-based research on technical practices, cognitive load, developer experience, and metrics (Goodhart's Law) affecting engineering effectiveness.

🧠 Logic graph · General

87 edges here

15 verbs used

100 terms touched

6 narratives

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Edges touching a General term.

Cloud IAM Roles Applies Defence in Depth 4d
Cloud IAM Roles Applies Principle of Least Privilege Sep 23
Twelve-Factor App Complements Developer Experience (DX) Sep 16
Architecture Decision Records (ADRs) Complements Developer Experience (DX) Sep 16
Blameless Culture Complements Developer Experience (DX) Sep 16

OpenAPI turns a REST API's contract into a versioned, reviewable artifact, which is documentation-as-code in practice — the spec lives alongside the code and evolves with it. That discipline is what mitigates bus factor: when the API's behavior is captured in a machine-readable spec rather than trapped in one engineer's head, any teammate (or generated client, or mock server) can pick up the work. Remove documentation-as-code as the mediator and OpenAPI is just a file format with no obvious bearing on knowledge concentration.

OpenAPI / Swagger Specification · by means of · 🪢 Documentation as Code → Bus Factor

Vulnerability disclosure connects to the attack chain through the zero-day: by getting flaws privately reported and patched, disclosure shrinks the pool of unknown bugs that adversaries weaponize as zero-days. Since zero-days typically surface in the exploitation stage of an attack chain, responsible disclosure effectively removes a link attackers rely on to move from reconnaissance to compromise. The mediator matters because without the zero-day concept, disclosure has no direct relationship to attack staging models.

Responsible Vulnerability Disclosure · through · 🪢 Zero-Day Vulnerability → Attack Chain / Cyber Kill Chain

Rate limiting caps request volume at the edge, but on its own it can still let one noisy tenant drain shared pools before the limiter kicks in. The bulkhead pattern complements it by partitioning resources per client or workload, and in doing so it applies the defence-in-depth principle: if the rate limiter is misconfigured or bypassed, the bulkhead is an independent layer that still contains the blast radius. So the bulkhead is what turns a single throttling control into a layered defence.

Rate Limiting · via · 🪢 Bulkhead Pattern → Defence in Depth

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