Intermediate terms
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
2mo 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.
3mo ago
messaging intermediate
Bidirectional Text (BiDi)
1
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.
3mo 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.
3mo 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.
3mo ago
search intermediate
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.
3mo ago
javascript intermediate
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.
3mo ago
performance intermediate
Bytecode VMs
PHP 5.0+
1
Zend Engine (PHP), JVM (Java/Kotlin), CLR (.NET) — all compile source to platform-independent bytecode then interpret or JIT-compile to native code.
3mo ago
compiler intermediate
Bash Scripting
bash4
1
Writing shell scripts in Bash to automate command-line tasks — from simple file operations to complex deployment pipelines.
3mo ago
linux intermediate
Behaviour-Driven Development (BDD)
PHP 5.0+
1
A development practice where tests are written in business-readable language (Given/When/Then) that domain experts, developers, and testers all understand.
3mo ago
testing intermediate
Big-O Notation
PHP 5.0+
6
A mathematical notation describing how an algorithm's time or space requirements grow relative to input size, ignoring constants and lower-order terms.
3mo ago
algorithms intermediate
Binary Trees
PHP 5.0+
3
A hierarchical structure where each node has at most two children — Binary Search Trees enable O(log n) search, while balanced variants (AVL, Red-Black) guarantee it.
3mo ago
data_structures intermediate
bind_param()
PHP 5.1+
3
MySQLi method that binds PHP variables to prepared statement parameters, preventing SQL injection.
3mo ago
php intermediate
Bit Manipulation
Using bitwise operators (AND, OR, XOR, NOT, shifts) to manipulate individual bits — enabling compact storage, fast arithmetic, and O(1) set operations.
3mo ago
algorithms intermediate
Blameless Post-Mortem
PHP 5.0+
3
A structured review of an incident focused on systemic causes and improvements, not individual blame — making it safe to surface failures.
3mo ago
devops intermediate
Blue/Green Deployment
PHP 5.0+ Maintaining two identical production environments and switching traffic between them for zero-downtime releases and instant rollback.
3mo ago
devops intermediate
Broken Access Control
PHP 5.0+ Failure to enforce what authenticated users are allowed to do — the #1 OWASP vulnerability, enabling privilege escalation and data exposure.
CWE-284 OWASP A1:2021
3mo ago
security intermediate
8.8
Brooks's Law
"Adding manpower to a late software project makes it later" — new developers require onboarding time and increase communication overhead before contributing productively.
3mo ago
general intermediate
Builder Pattern
PHP 5.0+ Constructs complex objects step-by-step using a fluent interface, separating construction from representation.
3mo ago
quality intermediate
Built-in PHP Attributes
PHP 8.0+
PHP 8.0+ ships built-in attributes — #[Deprecated], #[Override], #[AllowDynamicProperties], #[SensitiveParameter] — for tooling and runtime hints.
3mo ago
php intermediate