Intermediate terms
Reasoning Models & Test-Time Compute
A class of LLMs trained to allocate extra inference-time compute to internal reasoning before answering, achieving large gains on math, code, and logic at the cost of latency and tokens.
2w ago
ai_ml intermediate
Resource Hints (preconnect, prefetch, preload)
HTML link attributes that instruct the browser to take early action on resources — opening connections, fetching future pages, or loading critical assets before they are discovered in HTML parsing.
1mo ago
performance intermediate
RabbitMQ Concepts
RabbitMQ is an AMQP message broker with flexible routing via exchanges — direct, topic, fanout, and headers routing enables complex message dispatch patterns.
2mo ago
messaging intermediate
RabbitMQ Fundamentals PHP 7.0+
A message broker implementing the AMQP protocol — producers publish to exchanges, exchanges route messages to queues via bindings, and consumers pull from queues — providing flexible routing, acknowledgements, and dead-letter handling.
2mo ago
messaging intermediate
Race Condition
A race condition occurs when the outcome of a program depends on the relative timing of concurrent operations — two threads reading and writing shared state without coordination.
2mo ago
concurrency intermediate
RAG — Retrieval-Augmented Generation
An LLM architecture that fetches relevant documents from an external knowledge base before generating a response, grounding answers in retrieved facts rather than training data alone.
2mo ago
ai_ml intermediate
Reducing Cyclomatic Complexity Techniques
Cyclomatic complexity counts independent code paths — reduce it by early returns, extracting conditions to named functions, using lookup tables, and replacing switch/if chains with polymorphism.
2mo ago
quality intermediate
Refactoring Boolean Flag Parameters
Boolean flags as function parameters obscure intent — replace with enums, separate functions, or named options objects for self-documenting APIs.
2mo ago
quality intermediate
register_globals Era & Why It Was Dangerous PHP 3.0+
PHP 4 shipped with register_globals=On by default — injecting GET/POST/COOKIE values as global variables, making PHP synonymous with insecurity until it was off-by-default in PHP 4.2.
2mo ago
php intermediate
Remote Code Execution (RCE)
A vulnerability allowing an attacker to run arbitrary code on the server — the most severe class of web vulnerability, typically achieved through eval(), unserialise(), file upload flaws, or OS command injection.
2mo ago
security intermediate
requestAnimationFrame — Smooth Animations HTML5
requestAnimationFrame(callback) schedules a function to run before the browser's next repaint — the correct way to animate in JavaScript, producing smooth 60fps motion and automatically pausing when the tab is hidden.
2mo ago
javascript intermediate
ResizeObserver API HTML5
ResizeObserver watches element size changes without polling — more efficient than resize event listeners and works for any element, not just the window.
2mo ago
javascript intermediate
Role-Based Access Control (RBAC)
An authorisation model where permissions are assigned to roles, and roles are assigned to users — checking 'can this role perform this action?' rather than 'can this specific user?'
2mo ago
security intermediate
register_globals Risk & Legacy Code PHP 3.0+
register_globals automatically created PHP variables from GET/POST/COOKIE data — removed in PHP 5.4. Legacy code using it is critically vulnerable to variable injection.
2mo ago
security intermediate
Reactive Patterns — Observer & Pub/Sub in JavaScript ES2015
EventEmitter, CustomEvent, and pub/sub patterns coordinate state changes across components without tight coupling — common in PHP-rendered pages with JS islands.
2mo ago
javascript intermediate
Regex Flags & Modifiers PHP 5.3+
PCRE modifiers in PHP — i (case-insensitive), m (multiline), s (dotall), x (verbose), u (Unicode) — and their inline equivalents (?imsx).
2mo ago
regex intermediate
Regex with grep, sed & awk
Three essential Linux text processing tools — grep for filtering lines, sed for stream editing, awk for field-based processing — all using regular expressions.
2mo ago
linux intermediate
Regular Expressions in JavaScript ES2015
JS regex syntax, flags (g, i, m, s, u, d), methods (test, match, matchAll, replace, split), and the critical differences from PHP's PCRE.
2mo ago
javascript intermediate
Removed PHP Function PHP 7.0+
Calling a function removed in a newer PHP version — causes a fatal error on upgrade and blocks modernisation of the PHP runtime.
2mo ago
php intermediate
Resource Prefetching HTML5
dns-prefetch, preconnect, preload, and prefetch hints — fetching critical resources early to reduce perceived load time.
2mo ago
performance intermediate