Intermediate terms
API Backwards Compatibility
2
Rules for evolving an API without breaking existing clients — additive changes are safe, removals and renames require versioning, and deprecation needs a documented sunset period.
6mo ago
API Design intermediate
API Documentation
2
OpenAPI/Swagger for REST APIs, Postman collections for explorability, and Stoplight for design-first workflows — good API docs are the product's user interface for developers.
6mo ago
API Design intermediate
API Idempotency Keys
PHP 7.0+
5
A client-generated unique key sent with non-idempotent requests — the server stores the response and returns it unchanged if the same key is received again, preventing duplicate operations.
6mo ago
API Design intermediate
API Key Lifecycle Management
4
Generating, distributing, rotating, and revoking API keys securely — covering scoping, expiry, audit logging, and emergency revocation procedures.
6mo ago
Security intermediate
API Mocking
1
Prism (OpenAPI mock server), WireMock (HTTP stub server), Mockoon (GUI), and Guzzle MockHandler for PHP unit tests — enabling testing without real API calls.
6mo ago
API Design intermediate
APM Tools
PHP 5.0+
4
Application Performance Monitoring tools — Datadog, New Relic, Elastic APM — provide distributed tracing, performance profiling, error tracking, and anomaly detection in production.
6mo ago
Observability intermediate
App Shell Architecture
PHP 7.0+
1
Caching the minimal HTML, CSS, and JS needed to display the UI skeleton on first load — so the shell renders instantly from cache while dynamic content loads from the network.
6mo ago
Mobile intermediate
Asymmetric Visibility (PHP 8.4)
PHP 8.4+
PHP 8.4 allows separate read and write visibility on properties — public(get) private(set) means anyone can read but only the class can write.
6mo ago
PHP intermediate
Abstract Classes
PHP 5.0+
5
Non-instantiable classes that define shared behaviour and enforce subclasses to implement required methods.
6mo ago
PHP intermediate
Acceptance Testing / BDD (Behat)
PHP 5.0+
3
Testing that the system meets business requirements from a user perspective — written in plain language (Gherkin) and automated with Behat in PHP.
6mo ago
Testing intermediate
Account Enumeration
PHP 5.0+
2
Differing application responses to valid vs. invalid usernames allow attackers to build a list of registered accounts.
CWE-203 OWASP A2:2021
6mo ago
Security intermediate
5.3
Account Takeover (ATO)
PHP 5.0+
15
An attacker gains full control of a user account through credential stuffing, phishing, session hijacking, or abusing password-reset flows.
CWE-287 OWASP A7:2021
6mo ago
Security intermediate
9.8
ACID Properties
PHP 5.0+
5
The four guarantees of database transactions: Atomicity, Consistency, Isolation, and Durability.
6mo ago
General intermediate
Adapter Pattern
PHP 5.0+ Converts the interface of a class into another interface clients expect, allowing incompatible interfaces to work together.
6mo ago
General intermediate
Advanced Array Functions
PHP 5.0+
2
PHP's array_walk, usort, array_reduce, array_column, and array_combine enable expressive data transformation without explicit loops.
6mo ago
PHP intermediate
Advanced Context Managers
Python 3.1+
Context managers (with statements) manage resource acquisition and release — contextlib provides tools for creating them without a full class definition.
6mo ago
Python intermediate
Advanced Python Dataclasses
Python 3.7+
2
Dataclasses auto-generate __init__, __repr__, __eq__ from field declarations — advanced features include frozen (immutable), slots (memory-efficient), and field metadata.
6mo ago
Python intermediate
AI Hallucination
9
When an LLM generates confident, plausible-sounding text that is factually incorrect — a fundamental property of next-token prediction, not a bug to be patched away.
6mo ago
AI / ML intermediate
Alerting & On-Call
PHP 5.0+
4
Automated notifications triggered when SLIs breach SLO thresholds — effective alerting is actionable, low-noise, and tied to clear runbooks.
6mo ago
DevOps intermediate
allow_url_fopen / allow_url_include
PHP 5.0+
3
PHP INI settings that permit file functions and include/require to load remote URLs — a major SSRF and RFI enabler.
CWE-98 OWASP A5:2021
6mo ago
PHP intermediate
9.8