Terms starting with "A"
Architecture Decision Records (ADRs)
Short documents capturing the context, decision, and rationale for significant architectural choices — creating an institutional memory of why the system is built the way it is.
3mo ago
general beginner
Argon2 Password Hashing
PHP 7.2+
1
The Password Hashing Competition winner (2015) — a memory-hard algorithm that resists GPU and ASIC brute-force attacks better than bcrypt.
OWASP A2:2021
3mo ago
security intermediate
ARIA Live Regions
HTML5
2
HTML attributes that instruct screen readers to announce dynamic content changes — essential for notifications, status messages, and search results that update without a page reload.
3mo ago
accessibility intermediate
ARIA Roles & Attributes
HTML5
1
Accessible Rich Internet Applications attributes add semantic meaning to HTML elements for screen readers — supplementing native HTML semantics for custom widgets.
3mo ago
frontend intermediate
Array Destructuring ([] = …)
PHP 7.1+
1
PHP's short list() syntax — [$a, $b] = $arr — assigns array elements to variables in a single expressive statement.
3mo ago
php intermediate
Array Unpacking with String Keys (PHP 8.1)
PHP 8.1+
PHP 8.1 allows the spread operator to unpack arrays with string keys — previously only integer-keyed arrays could be spread.
3mo ago
php intermediate
Arrays
PHP 5.0+
6
The most fundamental data structure — a contiguous block of memory holding elements of the same type, offering O(1) index access but O(n) insertion and deletion in the middle.
3mo ago
data_structures beginner
Arrow Functions (PHP 7.4)
PHP 7.4+
1
Concise single-expression anonymous functions using fn() that implicitly capture outer-scope variables by value.
3mo ago
php beginner
assert() — Code Execution Risk
PHP 5.0+
2
Passing a string to assert() causes PHP to evaluate it as code, equivalent to eval() if the argument is user-controlled.
CWE-95 OWASP A3:2021
3mo ago
php intermediate
9.8
Asset Versioning & Browser Cache Strategy
Serving static assets with immutable long-lived cache headers plus content-hash filenames — maximising cache hits while guaranteeing instant cache-busting on change.
3mo ago
performance beginner
Asymmetric Encryption
PHP 5.0+
1
A cryptographic system with a public key (shared freely) and a private key (kept secret) — data encrypted with the public key can only be decrypted with the private key.
3mo ago
cryptography advanced
Async Processing / Job Queues
PHP 5.0+
1
Deferring time-consuming work (emails, image processing, third-party API calls) to background workers via a queue, improving response times.
3mo ago
performance intermediate
async/await
ES2017 Syntactic sugar over Promises — async functions always return a Promise; await pauses execution until the awaited Promise settles.
3mo ago
javascript intermediate
Asynchronous vs Parallel Execution
PHP 7.0+ Async enables concurrency within a single thread by interleaving tasks during I/O waits; parallel execution uses multiple threads/processes for true simultaneous CPU execution.
3mo ago
concurrency intermediate
Attack Chain / Cyber Kill Chain
1
A sequential model of cyberattack stages from reconnaissance to exfiltration — used to identify optimal detection and disruption points.
3mo ago
security advanced
Attack Surface
PHP 5.0+ The sum of all points where an attacker can try to enter or extract data from a system.
3mo ago
general intermediate
Attributes / Annotations (PHP 8.0)
PHP 8.0+
Native structured metadata attached to classes, methods, properties, and parameters using #[AttributeName] syntax.
3mo ago
php intermediate
Auto Scaling
PHP 5.0+
1
Automatically adding or removing compute instances based on load metrics — ensuring capacity matches demand without over-provisioning or under-provisioning.
3mo ago
cloud intermediate
Autocomplete & Typeahead
PHP 5.0+
1
Showing relevant suggestions as the user types — requiring fast prefix search, debouncing, and careful UX to be helpful rather than distracting.
3mo ago
search intermediate
AWS Fundamentals for PHP Developers
PHP 5.0+ The core AWS services a PHP developer encounters — EC2, RDS, S3, SQS, ElastiCache, and IAM — and how they map to common application components.
3mo ago
cloud intermediate