Beginner terms
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
Fetch API ES2015
The browser-native Promise-based API for making HTTP requests — replacing XMLHttpRequest with a cleaner interface supporting streaming, CORS, and request/response objects.
4w ago
javascript beginner
HTTP Cookies in PHP PHP 7.3+
Cookies are small key-value pairs sent by the server via Set-Cookie and echoed back by the browser on every request — PHP sets them with setcookie() before any output, with Secure, HttpOnly, and SameSite flags controlling safety.
4w ago
php beginner
HTML lang Attribute
The lang attribute on <html> declares the page's primary language — required for screen readers to select the correct voice profile and pronunciation rules, and for WCAG 2.1 compliance.
1mo ago
accessibility beginner
HTML Meta Tags
Tags in <head> that provide page metadata — title, description, viewport, Open Graph — for browsers, search engines, and social platforms.
1mo ago
frontend beginner
Open Graph Protocol
Meta tags that control how a page appears when shared on social platforms — title, description, image, and URL shown in link previews on Facebook, LinkedIn, Slack, Discord, and Twitter/X.
1mo ago
frontend beginner
InnoDB vs MyISAM
InnoDB is the default MySQL storage engine supporting transactions, foreign keys, and row-level locking — MyISAM is legacy with table-level locking and no transaction support.
1mo ago
database beginner
Linux File Permissions
Read, write, and execute permissions assigned to owner, group, and others — the foundation of Linux access control for web application files.
CWE-732 OWASP A5:2021
1mo ago
linux beginner
7.5
MySQL AUTO_INCREMENT
A column attribute that automatically assigns sequential integer IDs on INSERT — the standard primary key pattern in MySQL.
1mo ago
database beginner
MySQL charset=utf8mb4 PHP 5.1+
The correct MySQL character set for full Unicode support — including emoji and supplementary characters that the older utf8 charset cannot store.
1mo ago
php beginner
MySQL Date and Time Types
DATETIME, TIMESTAMP, DATE, TIME, and YEAR — each with different ranges, timezone handling, and storage sizes.
1mo ago
database beginner
MySQL DSN (Data Source Name) PHP 5.1+
The connection string passed to PDO specifying the database driver, host, port, database name, and charset.
1mo ago
php beginner
MySQL ENUM Type
A column that accepts only predefined string values — stored efficiently as integers but with significant schema change pain.
1mo ago
database beginner
MySQL JOIN Types
INNER JOIN, LEFT JOIN, RIGHT JOIN, and CROSS JOIN — controlling which rows are included when combining tables.
1mo ago
database beginner
MySQL NULL Handling
NULL in SQL represents an unknown value — it is not zero, not empty string, and comparisons with = NULL are always false.
1mo ago
database beginner
MySQL Numeric Types
INT, BIGINT, DECIMAL, FLOAT, DOUBLE — the right type prevents overflow, precision loss, and money calculation bugs.
1mo ago
database beginner
MySQL String Types: VARCHAR vs TEXT vs CHAR
CHAR is fixed-length, VARCHAR is variable-length up to 65,535 bytes, TEXT variants store large content — each with different indexing and storage behaviour.
1mo ago
database beginner
PDO Error Handling PHP 5.1+
PDO has three error modes — silent, warning, and exception — controlling how database errors surface.
1mo ago
php beginner
PDO Fetch Modes PHP 5.1+
Constants controlling how PDO returns rows — as arrays, objects, or custom classes.
1mo ago
php beginner
PDO lastInsertId() PHP 5.1+
Returns the auto-increment ID generated by the most recent INSERT statement.
1mo ago
php beginner