Terms starting with "A"
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
Alerting Best Practices
1
Good alerts are actionable, symptom-based, and rare — page on user impact, not causes. Alert fatigue from noisy alerts is as dangerous as no alerts.
6mo ago
Observability intermediate
Anchors & Word Boundaries
PHP 5.3+
3
Zero-width assertions that match positions rather than characters — ^ matches start of string, $ matches end, \b matches a word boundary — ensuring patterns match in the correct location.
6mo ago
Regex beginner
Anonymous Functions / Closures (PHP 5.3)
PHP 5.3+
1
PHP 5.3 introduced anonymous functions (closures) — function() {} expressions assignable to variables, passable as callbacks, and able to capture outer scope with use().
6mo ago
PHP intermediate
Apache Kafka Concepts
1
Kafka is a distributed log — producers append to immutable, ordered topics partitioned for parallelism, consumers read at their own pace and replay from any offset.
6mo ago
Messaging intermediate
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
APM — Application Performance Monitoring
PHP 7.0+
1
APM tools (Datadog, New Relic, Blackfire) automatically instrument applications to profile code-level performance — identifying slow DB queries, N+1 problems, and method-level bottlenecks.
6mo ago
Observability intermediate
App Shell Pattern
2
A PWA architecture that separates the minimal UI skeleton (shell) from dynamic content — the shell is cached by the service worker and loads instantly, while content is fetched fresh on each visit.
6mo ago
Mobile intermediate
Array.flat() & Array.flatMap()
ES2019
1
Array.flat(depth) flattens nested arrays; Array.flatMap() maps then flattens one level — more efficient than map().flat() and great for expanding items.
6mo ago
JavaScript beginner
array_column() — Plucking Values from Arrays
PHP 5.5+
array_column() extracts a single column from a multi-dimensional array or array of objects — the idiomatic PHP replacement for foreach loops that build lookup arrays, and for creating ID-indexed maps.
6mo ago
PHP beginner
array_find() / array_find_key() (PHP 8.4)
PHP 8.4+
4
PHP 8.4 adds array_find() and array_find_key() — built-in functions that return the first element (or key) matching a callback predicate, replacing verbose foreach loops or array_filter() + reset() patterns.
6mo ago
PHP beginner
array_map / filter / reduce as FP Patterns
PHP 5.3+
1
PHP's array_map(), array_filter(), and array_reduce() enable functional-style data transformation pipelines — cleaner than imperative loops for many common patterns.
6mo ago
PHP intermediate
Arrow Functions fn() => (PHP 7.4)
PHP 7.4+
PHP 7.4 arrow functions (fn($x) => $x * $factor) are short closures that automatically capture outer scope — no more use($var) boilerplate.
6mo ago
PHP beginner
At-Least-Once Delivery
3
At-least-once delivery guarantees a message is delivered to at least one consumer, possibly multiple times — consumers must be idempotent to handle duplicates safely.
6mo ago
Messaging intermediate
Atomic Operations
2
An atomic operation completes entirely or not at all — no intermediate state is visible to other threads. Atomic ops are the building blocks of lock-free concurrency.
6mo ago
Concurrency intermediate
Atomic Operations
5
Atomic operations complete indivisibly — no other thread can observe an intermediate state. The foundation for lock-free concurrency and database counters.
6mo ago
Concurrency intermediate
Attributes #[] Replacing Docblock Annotations
PHP 8.0+
PHP 8.0 native attributes (#[Route('/home')]) replace fragile DocBlock @annotations — they're syntactically valid, parseable without reflection hacks, and supported by IDEs and static analysis.
6mo ago
PHP intermediate
Authentication
PHP 7.0+
11
The process of verifying that a user is who they claim to be — typically by validating credentials (password, token, certificate) and establishing a session or issuing a signed token for subsequent requests.
6mo ago
Security intermediate
Authorisation
PHP 7.0+
6
The process of determining what an authenticated user is permitted to do — checking permissions, roles, or policies before allowing access to a resource or action.
6mo ago
Security intermediate
Accessing Undeclared Properties (PHP 8.2+)
PHP 8.2+
PHP 8.2 deprecated dynamic (undeclared) properties — PHP 9 will make them an error. Declare all properties explicitly or use AllowDynamicProperties.
6mo ago
PHP intermediate