Terms starting with "B"
Brute-Force Protection
Defences against automated credential-guessing attacks — rate limiting login attempts, account lockout, CAPTCHA, and multi-factor authentication to make guessing passwords computationally infeasible.
CWE-307 OWASP A7:2021
4w ago
security intermediate
Backpressure
Backpressure signals upstream producers to slow down when downstream consumers can't keep up — preventing queue overflow, memory exhaustion, and system collapse under load.
2mo ago
messaging intermediate
Bidirectional Text (BiDi)
The handling of text that mixes left-to-right (LTR) and right-to-left (RTL) scripts in the same document — governed by the Unicode Bidirectional Algorithm, with CSS and HTML direction attributes controlling display.
2mo ago
i18n intermediate
BigInt — Arbitrary Precision Integers ES2020
JavaScript's Number type cannot safely represent integers larger than 2⁵³−1 (Number.MAX_SAFE_INTEGER). BigInt is a separate numeric type that handles integers of arbitrary size, essential for working with 64-bit IDs from databases, cryptographic values, and precise financial calculations.
2mo ago
javascript intermediate
BM25 Ranking
Best Match 25 — the industry-standard relevance ranking algorithm used by Elasticsearch, Lucene, and SQLite FTS5, refining TF-IDF with better document length normalisation and a term frequency saturation parameter.
2mo ago
search intermediate
Branded / Opaque Types in TypeScript
A technique to make structurally identical types incompatible — a UserId and an OrderId are both strings, but branding makes them distinct types so passing an OrderId where UserId is expected is a compile-time error.
2mo ago
typescript advanced
BroadcastChannel — Cross-Tab Messaging HTML5
BroadcastChannel allows same-origin pages/tabs to communicate — post a message on one tab, receive it in all others — without a server or service worker.
2mo ago
javascript intermediate
B-Trees & B+ Trees
Self-balancing tree structures used in database indexes — each node holds multiple keys, keeping the tree shallow and minimising disk I/O for range queries.
2mo ago
data_structures advanced
Backends for Frontends (BFF) PHP 7.0+ A dedicated API layer per frontend client (mobile app, web app, third-party) — each BFF aggregates and transforms microservice data for its specific client's needs.
2mo ago
architecture advanced
Bike-Shedding
Spending disproportionate time on trivial, visible decisions (tab vs space, variable naming) while complex, important decisions receive inadequate attention.
2mo ago
general beginner
Block Cipher Modes PHP 7.1+
How a block cipher (AES) processes data larger than one block — ECB is insecure, CBC requires a MAC, GCM provides authenticated encryption and is the correct choice.
2mo ago
cryptography advanced
Branch Naming Conventions
Consistent branch names using type/description patterns — making branch purpose immediately clear and enabling automation based on branch name prefixes.
2mo ago
style beginner
Brotli vs gzip Compression PHP 5.0+
Brotli (br) compresses 15-25% better than gzip for text content — use Brotli for supported browsers (all modern ones), gzip as fallback, both configured at the server level not PHP.
2mo ago
performance intermediate
Business Logic Abuse
Exploiting flaws in application workflows rather than technical vulnerabilities — bypassing payment steps, abusing discount codes, manipulating quantity fields, or racing concurrent requests.
2mo ago
security advanced
Bytecode VMs PHP 5.0+
Zend Engine (PHP), JVM (Java/Kotlin), CLR (.NET) — all compile source to platform-independent bytecode then interpret or JIT-compile to native code.
2mo ago
compiler intermediate
Backtracking
An algorithmic technique that builds solutions incrementally, abandoning a path ('backtracking') when it determines the current path cannot lead to a valid solution.
2mo ago
algorithms advanced
basename() PHP 5.0+
Returns only the filename component of a path, stripping any directory prefix — a simple path traversal defence.
2mo ago
php beginner
Bash Scripting bash4 Writing shell scripts in Bash to automate command-line tasks — from simple file operations to complex deployment pipelines.
2mo ago
linux intermediate
Behaviour-Driven Development (BDD) PHP 5.0+ A development practice where tests are written in business-readable language (Given/When/Then) that domain experts, developers, and testers all understand.
2mo ago
testing intermediate
Big-O Notation PHP 5.0+ A mathematical notation describing how an algorithm's time or space requirements grow relative to input size, ignoring constants and lower-order terms.
2mo ago
algorithms intermediate