Terms starting with "A"
Abstract Factory Pattern PHP 5.0+
Creates families of related objects ensuring they are used together consistently without mixing implementations.
2mo ago
quality intermediate
Accessibility Testing Tools PHP 5.0+
axe, Lighthouse, WAVE catch 30-40% of issues automatically — manual keyboard and screen reader testing is required for the rest.
2mo ago
accessibility intermediate
Accessible Forms HTML5
Every input needs a visible label, errors linked via aria-describedby, required fields indicated, and validation announced via aria-live.
2mo 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.
2mo ago
accessibility intermediate
Active Record Pattern PHP 5.0+
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.
2mo ago
quality intermediate
Adjacency Matrix vs Adjacency List
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).
2mo ago
data_structures intermediate
Aggregate Design Heuristics PHP 7.0+ Rules for sizing aggregates correctly — small aggregates with single-entity transactions, referencing other aggregates by ID, and designing boundaries around invariants not convenience.
2mo ago
architecture advanced
Ahead-of-Time vs Just-in-Time Compilation
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).
2mo ago
compiler intermediate
AI API Cost Management
Strategies to reduce LLM API costs — caching identical prompts, batching requests, choosing smaller models for simpler tasks, and minimising context length.
2mo ago
ai_ml intermediate
AI Evaluation Metrics
Quantitative measures for assessing LLM output quality — BLEU, ROUGE, perplexity for text generation; precision, recall, F1 for classification; human evaluation for open-ended tasks.
2mo ago
ai_ml advanced
AI Function Calling & Tool Use PHP 8.0+
LLMs requesting execution of application-defined functions — the model returns structured arguments; the application controls execution and must validate inputs.
2mo ago
ai_ml advanced
AI-Assisted Code Generation
Using LLMs to generate, complete, or refactor code — powerful for boilerplate and exploration but requiring review for correctness, security, and licence compliance.
2mo ago
ai_ml intermediate
Alert Fatigue
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.
2mo 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.
2mo ago
algorithms advanced
API Abuse Prevention PHP 5.0+ Techniques to detect and block bots, scrapers, credential stuffing, and automated abuse — beyond basic rate limiting to behavioural and intelligence-based controls.
2mo ago
security advanced
API Authentication Patterns
Bearer tokens (JWT) for user sessions, API keys for machine-to-machine, mTLS for highest-security internal services — matching authentication method to the use case.
2mo ago
api_design intermediate
API Backwards Compatibility 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.
2mo ago
api_design intermediate
API Composition Pattern
An API layer aggregates parallel service calls into a single client response — reducing N round trips to 1 and improving perceived latency.
2mo ago
architecture advanced
API Contract Testing
Consumer-driven contract tests verify that a provider API matches what consumers expect — catching breaking changes before deployment, without end-to-end tests.
2mo ago
api_design advanced
API Documentation
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.
2mo ago
api_design intermediate