Advanced terms
Provenance Tracking (PROV)
Recording the full derivation chain - inputs, agents, and activities - that produced a data item, using models like W3C PROV.
3w ago
Knowledge Engineering advanced
Python GIL & Free Threading
Python 3.13+
The GIL serializes Python bytecode across threads; PEP 703 free-threading (3.13+) removes it, enabling true parallelism.
2mo ago
Python advanced
PHP curl_multi
PHP 7.0+
4
curl_multi_* runs many HTTP requests in parallel from one PHP process, dramatically cutting total latency for I/O-bound work.
2mo ago
PHP advanced
Python Descriptor Protocol
Python 3.6+
Objects implementing __get__/__set__/__delete__ that intercept attribute access at the class level — the machinery behind property, classmethod, and ORM fields.
4mo ago
Python advanced
Prompt Injection Attack
5
An attack where crafted user input overrides or hijacks an LLM's system instructions, causing it to ignore its intended behaviour and follow attacker-supplied commands instead.
CWE-74 OWASP LLM01:2025
6mo ago
AI / ML advanced
PHP Fibers — Internals & Scheduler Patterns
PHP 8.1+
2
How PHP Fibers work under the hood — stack allocation, suspension mechanics, and how to build a cooperative multitasking scheduler on top of the Fiber API introduced in PHP 8.1.
6mo ago
PHP advanced
PCNTL Signals in CLI PHP
PHP 7.1+
6
The PCNTL extension lets CLI PHP scripts handle OS signals (SIGTERM, SIGINT, SIGUSR1) — enabling graceful shutdown and hot reload in long-running daemons.
6mo ago
PHP advanced
PHP Garbage Collection Internals (Cycle Collector)
PHP 5.3+
1
PHP uses reference counting as its primary memory management strategy — when a value's reference count drops to zero it is freed immediately. A secondary cycle collector handles circular references that reference counting alone cannot free.
6mo ago
PHP advanced
PHP Memory Model — Zval & Copy-on-Write
PHP 7.0+
2
PHP stores every value in a zval (Zend value) container that holds the type, value, and a reference count. Arrays and strings are copied lazily — the copy only happens when one copy is modified (copy-on-write), making passing large values cheap until mutation.
6mo ago
PHP advanced
PHP Sodium Extension (Libsodium)
PHP 7.2+
5
The Sodium extension (bundled since PHP 7.2) provides modern, misuse-resistant cryptography via the libsodium C library — covering authenticated encryption, key exchange, password hashing with Argon2, and digital signatures with a simple, safe API.
6mo ago
PHP advanced
Prompt Injection Attacks (LLM Security)
7
An attack where malicious instructions embedded in user input or retrieved content override an LLM's system prompt — causing it to ignore its instructions, reveal confidential information, or take unintended actions.
6mo ago
Security advanced
Property Hooks (PHP 8.4)
PHP 8.4+
PHP 8.4 property hooks add get and set accessors directly to property declarations — eliminating the need for explicit getter/setter methods on simple value objects.
6mo ago
PHP advanced
preg_replace /e Modifier (Removed)
PHP 3.0+
The /e modifier in preg_replace() evaluated the replacement as PHP code — removed in PHP 7.0. Any legacy code using it is a critical RCE vulnerability.
6mo ago
Security advanced
P vs NP & NP-Completeness
P problems are solvable in polynomial time; NP problems have solutions verifiable in polynomial time. NP-complete problems are the hardest in NP — no polynomial-time algorithm is known.
6mo ago
Algorithms advanced
PHP Async Frameworks
PHP 8.1+
9
ReactPHP and Amp provide event-loop async I/O — enabling concurrent HTTP requests without blocking.
6mo ago
Performance advanced
PHP Compilation Pipeline
PHP 5.0+
8
Source code → lexer → tokens → parser → AST → compiler → opcodes → Zend VM — OPcache intercepts after compilation to cache and reuse opcodes across requests.
6mo ago
Compiler advanced
PHP Concurrency Options
PHP 7.0+
1
PHP's concurrency toolkit — Fibers for cooperative multitasking, pcntl for process forking, pthreads for true threading (CLI only), and async frameworks (ReactPHP, Amp).
6mo ago
Concurrency advanced
PHP Intl Extension — Unicode
PHP 5.3+
2
Grapheme functions, Normalizer, and Transliterator — correct multilingual text handling beyond what mb_string provides, including emoji and combining characters.
6mo ago
PHP advanced
Platform Engineering
7
Building internal developer platforms that abstract infrastructure complexity — giving product teams self-service access to deployment, observability, and data services without ops tickets.
6mo ago
DevOps advanced
Polyglot Persistence
2
Using multiple different database technologies in a single application — each chosen for what it does best rather than forcing all data into one general-purpose store.
6mo ago
General advanced