Advanced terms
Atomic Groups
PHP 4.0+
Non-capturing groups written (?>...) that prevent backtracking once matched, locking in progress to avoid catastrophic slowdown.
2mo ago
Regex advanced
AI Model Quantization
Compressing neural network weights and activations to lower-precision formats (int8, int4, fp8) to shrink memory and accelerate inference.
5mo ago
AI / ML advanced
AI Alignment
3
The research and engineering discipline of ensuring AI systems pursue goals that are consistent with human values, intentions, and safety — not just stated objectives.
6mo ago
AI / ML advanced
AI Context Poisoning
2
An adversarial technique where malicious instructions are injected into an LLM's context window — via user input, retrieved documents, or tool results — to hijack the model's behaviour.
6mo ago
AI / ML advanced
AI Governance
9
The policies, processes, and organisational structures that ensure AI systems are developed, deployed, and monitored responsibly — covering accountability, fairness, transparency, and compliance.
6mo ago
AI / ML advanced
A* Pathfinding Algorithm
4
Heuristic search algorithm that finds the lowest-cost path using f(n)=g(n)+h(n), widely used in maps and game AI.
6mo ago
Algorithms advanced
Abstract readonly Properties
PHP 8.4+
PHP 8.4 allows abstract readonly properties in abstract classes and interfaces — defining that implementations must provide a readonly property of a specific type.
6mo ago
PHP advanced
Actor Model
The Actor Model treats everything as an actor — isolated units that communicate only by message passing, never sharing state — eliminating race conditions by design.
6mo ago
Concurrency advanced
AI Agent Pattern
2
An LLM-powered system that takes multi-step actions autonomously — calling tools, reading results, and deciding next steps in a loop until a goal is achieved.
6mo ago
AI / ML advanced
Apache Kafka Fundamentals
PHP 7.0+
8
A distributed event streaming platform that stores messages as an immutable ordered log partitioned across a cluster — optimised for high-throughput, durable, replayable event streams rather than traditional task queues.
6mo ago
Messaging advanced
Aggregate Design Heuristics
PHP 7.0+
3
Rules for sizing aggregates correctly — small aggregates with single-entity transactions, referencing other aggregates by ID, and designing boundaries around invariants not convenience.
6mo ago
Architecture advanced
AI Evaluation Metrics
11
Quantitative measures for assessing LLM output quality — BLEU, ROUGE, perplexity for text generation; precision, recall, F1 for classification; human evaluation for open-ended tasks.
6mo ago
AI / ML advanced
AI Function Calling & Tool Use
PHP 8.0+
1
LLMs requesting execution of application-defined functions — the model returns structured arguments; the application controls execution and must validate inputs.
6mo ago
AI / ML advanced
Amortized Analysis
Averaging the cost of an operation over a sequence — explaining why dynamic array append is O(1) amortised despite occasional O(n) resizes.
6mo ago
Algorithms advanced
API Abuse Prevention
PHP 5.0+
1
Techniques to detect and block bots, scrapers, credential stuffing, and automated abuse — beyond basic rate limiting to behavioural and intelligence-based controls.
6mo ago
Security advanced
API Composition Pattern
1
An API layer aggregates parallel service calls into a single client response — reducing N round trips to 1 and improving perceived latency.
6mo ago
Architecture advanced
API Contract Testing
2
Consumer-driven contract tests verify that a provider API matches what consumers expect — catching breaking changes before deployment, without end-to-end tests.
6mo ago
API Design advanced
ABC Metric (Assignments, Branches, Conditions)
PHP 5.0+
4
Code complexity metric using vector magnitude of assignments, branches, and conditions — more expressive than line count.
6mo ago
Code Quality advanced
Abstract Syntax Tree (AST)
PHP 7.0+
10
Tree representation of code structure used by compilers and tools to analyse and transform programs.
6mo ago
Compiler advanced
AI Agents & Tool Use
4
AI agents combine LLMs with tools (functions, APIs, code execution) to autonomously complete multi-step tasks — moving from single-shot Q&A to goal-directed action.
6mo ago
AI / ML advanced