General terms
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.
Technical Writing for Developers
The craft of writing documentation, READMEs, design docs, RFCs, and comments clearly enough that another engineer can act on them without asking you — a force multiplier that most developers undertrain.
3w ago
general beginner
Bike-Shedding
Spending disproportionate time on trivial, visible decisions (tab vs space, variable naming) while complex, important decisions receive inadequate attention.
2mo ago
general beginner
Hofstadter's Law
"It always takes longer than you expect, even when you take Hofstadter's Law into account" — software estimation is systematically and recursively optimistic.
2mo ago
general beginner
Pareto Principle in Engineering
The 80/20 rule — roughly 80% of effects come from 20% of causes. In engineering: 80% of bugs come from 20% of modules, 80% of performance gains from 20% of optimisations.
2mo ago
general beginner
Runbooks & Playbooks
Documented step-by-step procedures for handling operational tasks and incidents — ensuring any on-call engineer can respond correctly under pressure without tribal knowledge.
2mo ago
general beginner
Allowlist vs Blocklist PHP 5.0+ Allowlists define what is permitted; blocklists define what is forbidden. Allowlists are always more secure.
2mo ago
general beginner
Architecture Decision Records (ADRs) Short documents capturing the context, decision, and rationale for significant architectural choices — creating an institutional memory of why the system is built the way it is.
2mo ago
general beginner
Blameless Culture
An organisational norm where incidents and mistakes are treated as systemic learning opportunities rather than individual failures deserving punishment.
2mo ago
general beginner
Bug Bounty Programme
A programme offering financial rewards to security researchers who responsibly disclose vulnerabilities in a vendor's systems.
2mo ago
general beginner
Bus Factor
The minimum number of team members who could be incapacitated before a project stalls — a measure of knowledge concentration risk.
2mo ago
general beginner
Code Documentation
Written explanations of code intent, architecture decisions, APIs, and operational concerns — distinct from comments in source files.
2mo ago
general beginner
Code Review PHP 5.0+
A systematic peer examination of source code before merging, catching bugs, sharing knowledge, and enforcing standards.
2mo ago
general beginner
Developer Experience (DX)
The quality of a developer's interactions with tools, APIs, documentation, and processes — good DX reduces friction, speeds onboarding, and increases productivity.
2mo ago
general beginner
Documentation as Code
Treating documentation with the same discipline as code — version controlled, reviewed in pull requests, tested for accuracy, and kept close to the code it describes.
2mo ago
general beginner
Mob Programming
The whole team works on one task at one computer simultaneously — combining pair programming across the entire team for complex or knowledge-critical work.
2mo ago
general beginner
Pair Programming
Two developers work together at one workstation — one writing code (driver), one reviewing and guiding (navigator).
2mo ago
general beginner
Refactoring PHP 5.0+
Improving code structure without changing its external behaviour — cleaning up debt while keeping tests green.
2mo ago
general beginner
Separation of Concerns
Organising code so that each part addresses a distinct concern — business logic, data access, presentation — with minimal overlap.
2mo ago
general beginner
Soft Delete Pattern PHP 5.0+
Marking records as deleted with a flag or timestamp rather than removing them, preserving data for audit trails and recovery.
2mo ago
general beginner
UUID vs Auto-Increment IDs
UUIDs are globally unique identifiers that don't expose record counts or enable enumeration, at the cost of larger index size and random writes.
2mo ago
general beginner