Terms starting with "A"
Accidental Object Mutation Bugs
ES2015
Objects and arrays are passed by reference in JS — mutating a function parameter or array element mutates the original, causing subtle cross-component state bugs.
6mo ago
JavaScript intermediate
ArgumentCountError — Wrong Arg Count
PHP 7.1+
PHP 7.1+ throws ArgumentCountError when too few arguments are passed to a function — too many arguments are silently ignored (unless using strict_types).
6mo ago
PHP beginner
Async Error Handling (try/catch + Promise)
ES2017
2
Errors in async functions require try/catch or .catch() — a rejected Promise that's not caught becomes an unhandledRejection that crashes Node or shows a console warning in browsers.
6mo ago
JavaScript intermediate
AbortController — Cancellable Fetch
ES2017
1
AbortController cancels in-flight fetch requests — essential for search-as-you-type, tab switching, and preventing race conditions in PHP API calls.
6mo ago
JavaScript intermediate
AJAX Patterns for PHP Backends
ES2017
3
Patterns for communicating with PHP backends via fetch — JSON APIs, CSRF tokens, error handling, and response parsing.
6mo ago
JavaScript intermediate
Axios — HTTP Client for PHP APIs
ES2015
4
Axios is a promise-based HTTP client with interceptors, automatic JSON parsing, and CSRF token injection — common in Laravel and Symfony frontends.
6mo ago
JavaScript intermediate
Abstract Factory Pattern
PHP 5.0+
Creates families of related objects ensuring they are used together consistently without mixing implementations.
6mo ago
Code Quality intermediate
Accessibility Testing Tools
PHP 5.0+
1
axe, Lighthouse, WAVE catch 30-40% of issues automatically — manual keyboard and screen reader testing is required for the rest.
6mo ago
Accessibility intermediate
Accessible Forms
HTML5
1
Every input needs a visible label, errors linked via aria-describedby, required fields indicated, and validation announced via aria-live.
6mo ago
Accessibility intermediate
Accessible SVGs
SVG1.1
Decorative SVGs need aria-hidden=true; informative SVGs need role=img and aria-label or title+desc elements.
6mo ago
Accessibility intermediate
Active Record Pattern
PHP 5.0+
6
A design pattern where a database row is wrapped in an object that includes both the data and the persistence logic — the object knows how to save, update, and delete itself.
6mo ago
Code Quality intermediate
Adjacency Matrix vs Adjacency List
1
Two ways to represent a graph — adjacency matrix (2D array, O(1) edge lookup, O(V²) space) vs adjacency list (array of lists, O(V+E) space, better for sparse graphs).
6mo ago
Data Structures intermediate
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
Ahead-of-Time vs Just-in-Time Compilation
1
AOT compiles all code before execution (C, Go, Rust — fast startup, predictable performance). JIT compiles hot paths at runtime (PHP 8+, JVM — adapts to actual usage patterns).
6mo ago
Compiler intermediate
AI API Cost Management
2
Strategies to reduce LLM API costs — caching identical prompts, batching requests, choosing smaller models for simpler tasks, and minimising context length.
6mo ago
AI / ML intermediate
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
AI-Assisted Code Generation
6
Using LLMs to generate, complete, or refactor code — powerful for boilerplate and exploration but requiring review for correctness, security, and licence compliance.
6mo ago
AI / ML intermediate
Alert Fatigue
3
When alerts fire so frequently or for such trivial reasons that on-call engineers begin ignoring them — the most dangerous state for a production monitoring system.
6mo ago
Observability intermediate
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