Tools

Glossary Technical Guide

Terms you encounter when using developer tools — explained one by one. Keep this page handy as a reference.

1088 / 1088

A Group

A/B Test

Randomly showing two variants to users to statistically determine which improves KPIs.

Verified

a11y

Numeronym for Accessibility. Designing the web so everyone, including people with disabilities, can use it.

Verified

AbortController

Browser API for cancelling async operations like fetch. Used to abort requests on component unmount.

Verified

Above the Fold

Visible area without scrolling. Place the most important content and CTAs here for maximum impact.

Verified

Accessibility Audit

Inspection finding accessibility issues. Combines automated tools like axe and Lighthouse with manual testing.

Verified

Accessibility Statement

Page disclosing a site's accessibility conformance level and contact for issues. Legally required in some regions.

Verified

Accessibility Tree

Tree derived from the DOM passed to assistive technologies like screen readers. ARIA attributes appear here.

Verified

ACID

Atomicity, Consistency, Isolation, Durability. Fundamental properties for reliable database transactions.

Verified

ACID Guarantee

DB guarantee maintaining consistency even on mid-transaction failure, via Atomicity, Consistency, Isolation, Durability.

Verified

Adaptive Loading

Web strategy dynamically adjusting resources and features based on device CPU, memory, and network speed.

Verified

AES

Advanced Encryption Standard. Symmetric encryption standard. AES-256 is recommended for high security.

Verified

Affordance

Design cue that intuitively communicates how to interact with an element, like button depth or underlined links.

Verified

AI Agent

LLM-based system autonomously planning and executing tasks using tools. Often uses ReAct pattern.

Verified

AI Alignment

Research ensuring AI systems' goals and behaviors align with human intentions and values.

Verified

AI Safety

Research field ensuring AI systems behave safely without unintended harmful actions. Includes interpretability.

Verified

Amazon Aurora

AWS managed RDBMS compatible with MySQL and PostgreSQL. Claimed up to 5x faster than standard MySQL.

Verified

Amazon RDS

AWS managed relational database service offering MySQL, PostgreSQL, MariaDB, and more.

Verified

Amazon S3

AWS object storage with virtually unlimited scale and 11 nines of durability.

Verified

AMQP

Advanced Message Queuing Protocol. Wire-level protocol used by RabbitMQ and other message brokers.

Verified

Animation Performance

Achieving smooth 60fps animations by using only transform and opacity to leverage GPU composite layers.

Verified

Ansible

Agentless IaC and configuration management tool. Automates server setup with YAML Playbooks.

Verified

Apache Kafka

High-throughput distributed event streaming platform. Used for log ingestion and event-driven microservices.

Verified

Apache Spark

Distributed computing framework for large-scale parallel data processing. Used for batch jobs and ML.

Verified

API

Application Programming Interface. Specification for how software components communicate, often via REST and JSON over HTTP.

Verified

API Gateway

Entry point routing client requests to backend microservices. Also handles auth and rate limiting.

Verified

API Key

String token authenticating API access. Role scoping, rotation, and revocation management are critical.

Verified

API Mocking

Dummy server returning fake responses during development and testing instead of real backends. MSW is popular.

Verified

API Versioning

Strategy for evolving APIs while maintaining backward compatibility via URL path, headers, or query params.

Verified

App Router

Next.js 13+ routing system leveraging React Server Components with nested layouts.

Verified

ARIA

W3C spec supplementing HTML with roles, states, and properties for screen readers.

Verified

aria-live

ARIA attribute notifying screen readers of dynamic content changes. polite queues; assertive interrupts.

Verified

Aspect Ratio

Width-to-height ratio. The CSS aspect-ratio property maintains ratios like 16:9 in responsive layouts.

Verified

AST

Abstract Syntax Tree. Tree representation of source code used by linters, Babel, and code analysis tools.

Verified

Astro

Web framework shipping zero JS by default using Island Architecture for extreme performance.

Verified

async/await

Syntax for writing async code in a synchronous style. The modern standard for Promise-based async in JS/TS.

Verified

Atomic CSS

CSS methodology where each class has a single styling responsibility. Tailwind CSS is the prime example.

Verified

Atomic Design

UI methodology structuring components into 5 layers: Atoms, Molecules, Organisms, Templates, Pages.

Verified

Attack Surface

Total of all possible entry points for attackers. Reducing API endpoints and open ports minimizes it.

Verified

Attention Mechanism

Core Transformer technology computing relevance weights between all tokens in a sequence.

Verified

Auth Rate Limiting

Limiting login attempts to prevent brute force and credential stuffing attacks.

Verified

Authorization

Process checking what an authenticated user is permitted to do. Distinct from Authentication.

Verified

Auto Scaling

Automatically adjusting server count based on load. AWS Auto Scaling and K8s HPA are prime examples.

Verified

AutoML

Automating model selection, hyperparameter search, and feature engineering in machine learning.

Verified

Autoprefixer

PostCSS plugin automatically adding vendor prefixes to CSS. Ensures cross-browser compatibility.

Verified

Availability Zone

Physically isolated data center groups in AWS. Distributing across AZs achieves high availability.

Verified

AWS Fargate

AWS serverless container engine requiring no server management. Used with ECS or EKS.

Verified

AWS Lambda

AWS serverless computing service running functions on events. Pay-per-execution pricing model.

Verified

AWS Step Functions

AWS serverless workflow orchestrator. Visually builds complex business flows combining Lambda and other services.

Verified

Adaptive Bitrate

Streaming technology that adjusts video quality in real-time based on network conditions.

Verified

Adversarial Attack

Technique that tricks AI models by introducing subtle, human-imperceptible noise into data.

Verified

Agentic UI

UI that autonomously adapts and generates components based on AI agent goals and user intent.

Verified

Anchor Positioning

Modern CSS feature allowing elements to be positioned relative to a specific 'anchor' element.

Verified

Anti-aliasing

Technique used to smooth out jagged edges in digital images and fonts.

Verified

ABI

Interface between two binary program modules, often between an OS and an application.

Verified

AI Artifacts

Unnatural errors or distortions produced by AI models during content generation.

Verified

Asymptotic Notation

Mathematical notation used to describe the limiting behavior of an algorithm's performance.

Verified

Atomic CSS-in-JS

CSS-in-JS approach generating single-purpose, atomic classes for maximum stylesheet reuse.

Verified

ABAC

Authorization model that grants access based on user, resource, and environmental attributes.

Verified

AR (Augmented Reality)

Technology that overlays digital information, such as images or sound, onto the real world.

Verified

Auto-regressive Model

AI model that predicts future values based on past values, fundamental to models like GPT.

Verified

API Subset

A portion of an API's total functionality, often exposed for limited use cases.

Verified

B Group

B2B SaaS

Software as a Service for businesses. Multi-tenancy, role management, and SSO are common requirements.

Verified

Backpressure

Flow control mechanism signaling upstream to slow down when downstream processing falls behind.

Verified

Backpropagation

Algorithm propagating prediction error backward through a neural network to update weights.

Verified

Barrel File

index.ts re-exporting multiple modules to shorten import paths.

Verified

BASE

Basically Available, Soft state, Eventual consistency. Consistency model common in NoSQL, contrasting ACID.

Verified

Base64

Encoding that represents binary data using 64 ASCII characters. Used for Data URIs. Not encryption.

Verified

Batch Normalization

Normalizing activations within a mini-batch to stabilize and accelerate deep neural network training.

Verified

bcrypt

Password hashing algorithm with a cost factor to slow brute-force attacks. The recommended default for passwords.

Verified

BEM

Block, Element, Modifier. CSS naming convention using block__element--modifier to avoid style collisions.

Verified

BERT

Google's bidirectional Transformer for NLU tasks like classification and question answering.

Verified

BGP

Border Gateway Protocol. Exchanges routing information between Autonomous Systems on the internet.

Verified

BigQuery

Google Cloud's serverless data warehouse. Analyzes petabyte-scale data with SQL in near-real-time.

Verified

Biome

Rust-based linter and formatter for JS/TS aiming to replace ESLint and Prettier in one tool.

Verified

Blob Storage

Object storage for unstructured data like images and videos. AWS S3 and Azure Blob Storage are examples.

Verified

Bloom Filter

Probabilistic data structure for fast, memory-efficient membership checks. Used to reduce cache misses.

Verified

Blue-Green Deployment

Deployment strategy running two environments simultaneously, swapping traffic for zero downtime.

Verified

Blur Placeholder

Showing a blurred low-res image while the full version loads. Implemented via Next.js blurDataURL.

Verified

Brand Guidelines

Rules defining logo, colors, fonts, and tone to maintain brand consistency. Foundation of a design system.

Verified

Breakpoint

CSS threshold where layout changes based on screen width. Defined with @media queries.

Verified

Browser DevTools

Built-in browser debugging tools. Includes Elements, Console, Network, and Performance panels.

Verified

Brute Force Attack

Attack trying all possible combinations to crack passwords or keys. Mitigated with rate limiting and lockout.

Verified

Bug Bounty

Program paying security researchers for responsibly disclosing vulnerabilities. HackerOne facilitates this.

Verified

Build Tool

Tools transforming source code for production. Includes Vite, Webpack, Rollup, and esbuild.

Verified

Bulkhead Pattern

Resilience pattern isolating resource pools so failures in one don't cascade to others.

Verified

Bun

All-in-one fast JavaScript runtime, package manager, and bundler.

Verified

Bundle Size Analysis

Visualizing JS bundle contents to find unnecessary libraries and duplicates. webpack-bundle-analyzer is common.

Verified

Bundler (バンドラー)

Tool that combines multiple JS/CSS modules into optimized files. Webpack, Vite, and Rollup are common examples.

Verified

B-Tree

Self-balancing tree data structure that maintains sorted data for efficient searches and inserts.

Verified

BFF

Design pattern where a dedicated backend is built specifically for a certain frontend interface.

Verified

Barrel Export

Technique of aggregating exports from multiple modules into a single index file for easier imports.

Verified

Bayesian Network

Probabilistic graphical model representing a set of variables and their conditional dependencies.

Verified

Beacon API

Web API for sending small amounts of data to a server without delaying the page unload process.

Verified

Behavioral Analytics

Method of analyzing user actions within an application to uncover patterns and improve UX.

Verified

BST

Tree data structure where each node has at most two children, sorted for efficient lookup.

Verified

Bitbucket

Git-based source code repository hosting service often used in enterprise environments.

Verified

Black Box Testing

Testing method that examines the functionality of an application without peering into its internal structures.

Verified

Block Scope

Region of code where a variable is accessible, limited by curly braces in languages like JS.

Verified

Blue-Green Deployment

Deployment strategy that utilizes two identical environments to ensure zero-downtime releases.

Verified

BLE

Wireless personal area network technology designed for low power consumption and short-range use.

Verified

B-Tree Index

Database index type using balanced trees to provide quick data retrieval for range and equality queries.

Verified

Buffer Overflow Protection

Security features that detect and prevent attacks exploiting memory buffer overflows.

Verified

BLL

Layer in an application architecture that manages core business rules and data calculations.

Verified

BOM (Byte Order Mark)

Character code at the start of a binary file indicating the byte order and encoding of the text.

Verified

C Group

Cache (キャッシュ)

Temporarily storing fetched data to avoid re-fetching. Fundamental for improving performance.

Verified

Cache Busting

Adding a hash to file names to force browser cache invalidation. Used as main.abc123.js.

Verified

Cache Strategy

Patterns like Cache-Aside, Write-Through, and Write-Behind for reading and writing cache.

Verified

Canary Release

Releasing a new version to a small subset of users first, then gradually rolling out to everyone.

Verified

Canvas API

HTML5 API for 2D graphics rendering in the browser. Used for games, charts, and image processing.

Verified

CAP Theorem

Theorem stating distributed systems can guarantee at most 2 of Consistency, Availability, Partition Tolerance.

Verified

Card Sorting

UX research method observing how users categorize information. Informs information architecture.

Verified

CDN

Content Delivery Network. Distributed servers that deliver static assets quickly based on user location.

Verified

CDN Cache Invalidation

Purging or updating cached CDN content. Critical step to prevent stale content after deployments.

Verified

Certificate Pinning

Hardcoding a specific TLS certificate in the client. Strengthens resistance to MITM attacks.

Verified

Chain of Thought

Prompt technique having LLMs show reasoning steps. Improves accuracy on complex problems.

Verified

Chunked Transfer Encoding

HTTP encoding sending responses in chunks. Used when the total content size is unknown upfront.

Verified

Chunking

Splitting long documents into smaller pieces for LLM context windows in RAG pipelines.

Verified

Chunking (UX)

UX technique grouping information into smaller chunks to reduce cognitive load. Multi-step forms are an example.

Verified

CI/CD

Continuous Integration / Continuous Deployment. Automates testing and deployment of code changes.

Verified

Circuit Breaker

Resilience pattern that temporarily blocks requests to a failing service to prevent overload.

Verified

Circuit Breaker States

Three-state machine of circuit breaker: Closed (normal), Open (blocking), Half-Open (testing recovery).

Verified

clamp()

CSS function taking min, preferred, and max values. Perfect for responsive font sizes without media queries.

Verified

CLI

Command Line Interface. UI navigated entirely by typing text commands in a terminal.

Verified

ClickHouse

Column-oriented OLAP database. Extremely fast for log analysis and time-series aggregation queries.

Verified

Clickjacking

Attack overlaying invisible iframes to hijack clicks. Prevented with X-Frame-Options header.

Verified

Client Component

Next.js App Router component marked 'use client', executing JavaScript in the browser.

Verified

CLIP

OpenAI model aligning images and text in the same embedding space. Used for image search.

Verified

CLS

Cumulative Layout Shift. Measures unexpected layout shifts during load. One of the Core Web Vitals.

Verified

CNAME

DNS record type aliasing one domain name to another. Commonly used for CDN and custom domains.

Verified

CNN

Convolutional Neural Network. Specialized for image recognition using convolution and pooling layers.

Verified

CockroachDB

Distributed SQL database combining horizontal scalability with ACID compliance and geo-distribution.

Verified

Code Injection

Broad attack category where malicious code is injected into an application. SQLi and XSS are subtypes.

Verified

Code Splitting

Splitting JS bundles into smaller chunks loaded on demand to reduce initial load time.

Verified

Cognitive Load

Mental effort required to understand and use a UI. Good design minimizes cognitive load.

Verified

Cold Start

Initial latency when a serverless function starts after being idle. A key drawback of serverless.

Verified

Color Blindness Accessibility

Design practice ensuring color-blind users can distinguish information using shape, icons, and text alongside color.

Verified

Color Scheme

CSS mechanism to switch light/dark themes based on OS settings using the prefers-color-scheme media query.

Verified

Column Store

Database storing data column-by-column. Fast for aggregation queries and ideal for OLAP workloads.

Verified

Composable

Vue 3 function that encapsulates reusable logic, equivalent to React custom hooks.

Verified

Compound Component

React pattern where parent and child components share state via Context for flexible composition.

Verified

Computed Property

Reactive value automatically derived and cached from other data. Core to Vue and MobX.

Verified

Computer Vision

AI field extracting information from images/video. Covers object detection, segmentation, and face recognition.

Verified

Concurrent Mode

React 18 mode allowing interruptible rendering to maintain UI responsiveness during heavy work.

Verified

Connection Pool

Reusing database connections to reduce connection overhead and manage concurrency efficiently.

Verified

Connection String

URL-format string containing DB host, port, and credentials. Always managed via environment variables.

Verified

Consistent Hashing

Hash algorithm minimizing data redistribution when nodes are added or removed in distributed systems.

Verified

Constitutional AI

Anthropic's technique defining explicit principles for AI behavior, enabling self-improvement via those rules.

Verified

Container Orchestration

Automating container deployment, scaling, networking, and health checks. Kubernetes is the de facto standard.

Verified

Container Query

CSS feature applying styles based on parent container size, enabling component-level responsiveness.

Verified

Container Registry

Repository for storing, managing, and distributing Docker images. DockerHub, ECR, and GCR are common.

Verified

containerd

Container runtime managing container lifecycle inside Docker. The default runtime for Kubernetes.

Verified

Content Compression

Reducing transfer size by compressing text resources with Brotli or gzip.

Verified

Content Negotiation

HTTP mechanism where client and server negotiate response format via Accept headers.

Verified

Content-First Design

Approach defining content structure before UI design. Evaluates designs with real copy, not placeholder text.

Verified

Context API

React built-in for passing data deep into component trees without prop drilling.

Verified

Context Window

Maximum tokens an LLM can process at once. Larger windows handle more context but increase cost.

Verified

Contextual Inquiry

Field research method observing and interviewing users in their actual work environment to uncover latent needs.

Verified

Continuous Delivery

Practice of keeping code always releasable to production. Deployment is triggered manually.

Verified

Contrast (コントラスト比)

Difference in luminance between foreground and background. WCAG recommends 4.5:1 for normal text.

Verified

Controlled Component

React pattern where form inputs are controlled by state and onChange handlers, keeping data and UI in sync.

Verified

Conventional Commits

Commit message convention using prefixes like feat, fix, and chore. Enables automated semantic releases.

Verified

Conversion Rate

Percentage of visitors completing a goal action like purchase or signup. A primary UX success metric.

Verified

CORS

Cross-Origin Resource Sharing. Browser security mechanism for API calls from different origins. Requires backend headers.

Verified

CORS Preflight

Browser's OPTIONS request before a cross-origin call to verify permission from the server.

Verified

CORS Security

Setting CORS headers to a whitelist rather than wildcard to protect APIs from unauthorized origins.

Verified

Cosine Similarity

Metric measuring directional similarity between vectors (-1 to 1). Used to compare embedding vectors.

Verified

Covering Index

Index containing all columns needed by a query, avoiding access to the main table rows entirely.

Verified

CPU Profiling

Measuring which parts of a program consume CPU resources to identify performance bottlenecks.

Verified

CQRS

Pattern separating read (Query) and write (Command) models for scalability and clarity.

Verified

Create React App

Facebook's React scaffolding tool. Migration to Vite is now recommended for new projects.

Verified

Credential Stuffing

Attack trying leaked email/password pairs on other services. MFA and password managers are the main defenses.

Verified

Critical CSS

Optimization extracting above-the-fold CSS and inlining it to eliminate render-blocking.

Verified

Cron

Unix job scheduler. Automates recurring tasks like batch jobs using time expressions in crontab.

Verified

CronJob (K8s)

Kubernetes resource managing scheduled batch jobs using the same cron schedule syntax as Unix.

Verified

Cross-Entropy Loss

Loss function measuring divergence between predicted and true probability distributions. Widely used in classification.

Verified

CSAT

Customer Satisfaction Score. Measures satisfaction with a specific interaction on a 1-5 scale.

Verified

CSP

Content Security Policy. HTTP header that prevents XSS by restricting script sources and inline execution.

Verified

CSR

Client-Side Rendering. JavaScript renders HTML inside the browser. Core of SPAs, but creates initial load delay.

Verified

CSRF

Cross-Site Request Forgery. Attack forcing a user to execute unwanted actions. Prevented with anti-CSRF tokens.

Verified

CSS Animation

CSS feature using @keyframes and animation properties to animate HTML elements without JavaScript.

Verified

CSS Custom Property

CSS variables defined with -- prefix (e.g. --color) for reusable values across stylesheets.

Verified

CSS Grid

CSS 2D layout system. Define rows and columns to create complex layouts with minimal code.

Verified

CSS Mixin

Reusable style blocks defined with @mixin and included with @include in Sass/SCSS.

Verified

CSS Modules

Scoping CSS class names to components by generating unique names at build time.

Verified

CSS Subgrid

CSS feature allowing grid children to inherit parent grid tracks for precise alignment.

Verified

CSS-in-JS

Writing CSS inside JavaScript. Emotion and styled-components are popular examples.

Verified

CSV

Comma-Separated Values. Tabular data separated by commas. Extensively used for data export/import.

Verified

CTA

Call to Action. Button or link driving user action. Placement, copy, and color affect conversion.

Verified

CVE

Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures. Unique IDs (CVE-YYYY-NNNNN) for publicly known vulnerabilities.

Verified

Cypress

JavaScript E2E testing framework with an intuitive API for browser-based testing.

Verified

Cache Eviction Policy

Algorithm defining which data to remove from a cache when it reaches its capacity limit.

Verified

Canary Deployment

Rollout strategy where a new version is released to a small subset of users before a full release.

Verified

Chaos Monkey

Tool that randomly terminates instances in a production environment to test system resilience.

Verified

Client Hints

Set of HTTP headers allowing a browser to provide information about the device and network to the server.

Verified

Cloud Agnostic

System design that avoids dependence on any single cloud provider's proprietary services.

Verified

Code Splitting

Optimization technique that splits code into smaller bundles to improve initial load performance.

Verified

Cold Standby

Redundancy strategy where a secondary system is available but powered down until a failure occurs.

Verified

Columnar Storage

Database storage format that stores data by columns rather than rows, ideal for analytical queries.

Verified

Composite Index

Database index consisting of multiple columns, optimizing queries that filter by more than one field.

Verified

Concurrency Control

Mechanisms used in databases and computing to ensure correct results when concurrent operations overlap.

Verified

CSP Level 3

Third level of the CSP standard, introducing features like 'strict-dynamic' for better security control.

Verified

Context-aware UI

UI that adapts its features and content based on the user's current environment and situation.

Verified

Control Plane

The part of a network that manages and controls where data traffic is directed.

Verified

Critical Rendering Path

Sequence of steps the browser takes to convert HTML, CSS, and JS into pixels on the screen.

Verified

Cross-functional Team

Group of people with different expertise working together toward a common goal or project.

Verified

CRUD

Acronym for the four basic functions of persistent storage: Create, Read, Update, and Delete.

Verified

Cyber Resilience

An entity's ability to continuously deliver its intended outcome despite adverse cyber events.

Verified

D Group

DaemonSet

Kubernetes resource ensuring one Pod per node. Used for log collectors and monitoring agents.

Verified

DALL·E

OpenAI's model generating high-quality images from text prompts. Based on Diffusion Model architecture.

Verified

Dark Mode

Dark background UI theme. Reduces eye strain and saves battery on OLED screens.

Verified

DAST

Dynamic Application Security Testing. Scanning a running application from outside for vulnerabilities.

Verified

Data Augmentation

Artificially expanding training data with transformations like rotation and cropping to improve generalization.

Verified

Data Fetching Patterns

Strategies for when and where to fetch data: CSR, SSR, SSG, ISR. Core to Next.js architecture.

Verified

Data Lake

Large-scale storage architecture holding raw data in its native format for diverse future analysis.

Verified

Data Masking

Replacing sensitive production data with fake data for safe use in development and test environments.

Verified

Data URI

Inline embedding format for Base64-encoded images in HTML/CSS, reducing HTTP requests.

Verified

Data Warehouse

Centralized repository of structured data optimized for analytics and reporting. Redshift and BigQuery are examples.

Verified

data-* Attribute

Custom HTML attribute attaching metadata to elements. Accessible in JavaScript via the dataset API.

Verified

Database Cursor

DB pointer mechanism for processing large result sets row by row without loading everything into memory.

Verified

Database Index

Data structure speeding up queries on specific columns. B-tree is common; trades off write performance.

Verified

Database Sharding

Horizontally splitting data across multiple DB nodes for scale-out at the cost of design complexity.

Verified

DB Migration

Version-controlling schema changes alongside code. Flyway and Prisma Migrate are popular tools.

Verified

DB Transaction

Grouping SQL operations so all succeed or all roll back together, guaranteeing ACID properties.

Verified

DDD

Domain-Driven Design. Centers software around the business domain using Entities, VOs, and Aggregates.

Verified

DDoS

Distributed Denial of Service. Overwhelming a server with traffic to make it unavailable.

Verified

Dead Letter Queue

Queue storing messages that failed processing. Essential for debugging and reprocessing failures.

Verified

Debounce

Technique to execute a function only after a pause in continuous events. Prevents excessive API calls.

Verified

Declarative UI

UI paradigm where you describe what to show; the framework handles DOM updates. React and Vue use this.

Verified

Defense in Depth

Layering multiple security controls so that breaking one layer doesn't compromise the whole system.

Verified

Deferred Loading

Loading off-screen images or scripts only when needed. Implemented with loading='lazy' or Intersection Observer.

Verified

Deno

JavaScript/TypeScript runtime redesigned by Node.js creator. Native TS support and secure by default.

Verified

Dependency Graph

Directed graph representing module dependencies. Used to detect circular deps and optimize bundles.

Verified

Dependency Scanning

Automated checking of dependencies for known vulnerabilities. Dependabot and Snyk are popular tools.

Verified

Deploy Preview

Auto-generated staging environment per PR or branch for review. Provided by Vercel and Netlify.

Verified

Deployment Strategy

Methods like blue-green, canary, and rolling for releasing new versions with minimal downtime.

Verified

Design Critique

Structured process for reviewing designs based on goals, users, and principles rather than personal preference.

Verified

Design Debt

Accumulated inconsistencies from quick fixes and non-standard patterns. Requires periodic design audits to resolve.

Verified

Design Handoff

Process of transferring design specs from designer to engineer. Typically done via Figma or Zeplin.

Verified

Design Sprint

Google's 5-day framework for idea validation: Define, Sketch, Decide, Prototype, and Test.

Verified

Design System

Shared foundation of tokens, components, and guidelines. Ensures consistency and speeds up development.

Verified

Design Token

Variables for design values like colors and spacing. Keeps design and code consistent across teams.

Verified

Desktop-First

Design approach starting from large screens and scaling down. Mobile-First is now the recommended alternative.

Verified

DevOps

Culture and practices integrating Dev and Ops for faster, more reliable software delivery.

Verified

DHCP

Protocol automatically assigning IP addresses to devices joining a network.

Verified

DI (依存性の注入)

Dependency Injection. Pattern where dependencies are passed from outside, making components easily testable.

Verified

DI Container

Framework feature managing dependency injection. Provided by NestJS and Spring for large-app structuring.

Verified

Dialog / Modal

Overlay UI demanding user attention above main content. Requires aria-modal for accessibility.

Verified

Diffusion Model

Generative model iteratively denoising data. Stable Diffusion and DALL·E use this for image generation.

Verified

Directory Traversal

Attack using ../ sequences to access files outside the web root. Prevented by sanitizing file paths.

Verified

Distributed Lock

Mutual exclusion for distributed processes. Often implemented with Redis to prevent simultaneous updates.

Verified

Distributed Tracing

Visualizing request flows across microservices. Tools include Jaeger, Zipkin, and OpenTelemetry.

Verified

DKIM

Email authentication adding a digital signature to verify the sending domain's legitimacy.

Verified

DMARC

Email policy using SPF and DKIM to prevent spoofing and define handling of failed checks.

Verified

DNS

Domain Name System. Translates domain names to IP addresses. Propagation can take up to 48 hours.

Verified

DNS Lookup

Process resolving a domain name to an IP address. Involves recursive and iterative resolution steps.

Verified

DNS TTL

Time in seconds a DNS record is cached. Too short increases name resolution load and hurts performance.

Verified

Docker

Containerization platform. Packages environments into containers to run identically anywhere.

Verified

Docker Compose

Tool defining and managing multi-container Docker setups with a YAML file. Widely used for local dev environments.

Verified

DOM

Document Object Model. Tree API allowing JavaScript to manipulate HTML documents.

Verified

Domain Model

Classes and objects representing business concepts and logic. The central artifact of Domain-Driven Design.

Verified

Double Diamond

UK Design Council model with 4 phases: Discover, Define, Develop, Deliver.

Verified

Drag & Drop API

HTML5 API enabling drag-and-drop interactions natively in the browser.

Verified

Drizzle ORM

Lightweight, SQL-first TypeScript ORM with type safety and near-raw-SQL ergonomics.

Verified

Dropout

Regularization technique randomly disabling neurons during training to prevent overfitting.

Verified

Dynamic Import

Asynchronous module loading with import() syntax. The basis for code splitting and lazy loading.

Verified

Dynamic Secrets

Generating unique, short-lived secrets per request via Vault. Minimizes exposure from credential leaks.

Verified

DynamoDB

AWS fully managed key-value and document NoSQL DB. Known for scalability and single-digit ms latency.

Verified

Data Anonymization

Process of removing or modifying personally identifiable information from data sets.

Verified

Data Governance

Collection of processes and standards that ensure the effective and efficient use of information.

Verified

Data Lineage

Metadata describing the origins, movements, and transformations of data over time.

Verified

Data Mesh

Decentralized data architecture that organizes data by specific business domains.

Verified

Data Pipeline

Set of automated processes that move data from a source to a destination.

Verified

Deadlock Prevention

Techniques used in computing to ensure that a system never enters a deadlock state.

Verified

Declarative Programming

Programming paradigm expressing the logic of a computation without describing its control flow.

Verified

Dependency Cycle

Situation where two or more modules depend on each other, creating a circular reference.

Verified

Deterministic Algorithm

Algorithm that, given a particular input, will always produce the same output through the same states.

Verified

Diffusion Model

Gen AI models that create data by learning to reverse a process of adding noise to images.

Verified

Digital Twin

Virtual representation of a physical object or system that uses real-time data for simulation.

Verified

Direct Manipulation

Interaction style in which users act directly on visual objects to perform tasks.

Verified

DDoS Protection

Security measures designed to mitigate the impact of distributed denial-of-service attacks.

Verified

Domain Authority

Metric developed to predict how well a website will rank on search engine result pages.

Verified

Dynamic Analysis

Testing and evaluation of an application by executing the program in a real-time environment.

Verified

E Group

E2E Test

End-to-End Test. Simulates real user interactions in a browser to verify the entire system stack.

Verified

ECB Mode

AES mode where identical plaintext blocks produce identical ciphertext. Reveals patterns; must be avoided.

Verified

Edge Computing

Executing logic on CDN edge servers close to users for ultra-low latency.

Verified

Elasticsearch

Distributed full-text search engine based on Apache Lucene. Widely used for log analysis and product search.

Verified

ELK Stack

Elasticsearch, Logstash, Kibana combo for collecting, analyzing, and visualizing logs.

Verified

Embedding

Dense vector representing the meaning of text or images. Foundation of semantic search and RAG.

Verified

Emotion

CSS-in-JS library known for performance and flexibility. Used by MUI and many other UI libraries.

Verified

Empathy Map

UX canvas visualizing a user's thoughts, feelings, actions, and words. Often precedes persona creation.

Verified

Empty State

UI shown when there's no content. Good empty states guide users toward the next action rather than showing blank space.

Verified

Encoder-Decoder

Neural network structure encoding input into a representation and decoding it to output. Used in translation and segmentation.

Verified

Encryption at Rest

Encrypting stored data on disk. Prevents data exposure if storage media is physically stolen.

Verified

Encryption in Transit

Encrypting data as it travels over networks. Implemented with TLS/HTTPS to prevent eavesdropping.

Verified

Enum

TypeScript type defining a set of named constants. String enums retain their values after compilation.

Verified

Envoy

High-performance proxy for service meshes developed by Lyft. Widely used as Istio's data plane.

Verified

Envoy Proxy

High-performance C++ proxy for edge and service mesh. Used as Istio's sidecar for L7 traffic control.

Verified

Error Boundary

React mechanism that catches JS errors in component trees and shows fallback UI instead of crashing.

Verified

Error Handling Strategy

App-wide strategy for managing errors using try/catch, error boundaries, and global error handlers.

Verified

Escape (エスケープ)

Converting special characters to safe forms. Context-aware escaping is critical for preventing XSS.

Verified

ESM

ECMAScript Modules. JavaScript's standard module system using import/export. Natively supported in Node.js.

Verified

etcd

Distributed key-value store used by Kubernetes for config and state management.

Verified

Event Delegation

Handling events on a parent element instead of individual children. Memory-efficient pattern.

Verified

Event Loop

Mechanism enabling async operations on a single thread in Node.js and browsers, coordinating with callback queues.

Verified

Event Sourcing

Storing state as a sequence of events rather than current values. Enables audit trails and replay.

Verified

Event-Driven Architecture

Architecture where services communicate via async events, enabling loose coupling.

Verified

EventEmitter

Node.js class enabling event-driven communication between objects. The basic implementation of Pub/Sub.

Verified

EXPLAIN / Query Plan

Command revealing a SQL query's execution plan. Visualizes index usage and bottlenecks for optimization.

Verified

Exponential Backoff

Retrying failed requests with exponentially increasing intervals to avoid overloading the server.

Verified

Eye Level Design

Designing the viewport-visible area strategically. Ensures critical content appears at eye level without scrolling.

Verified

Eye Tracking

UX research tech measuring exactly where users look. Visualizes attention hotspots and scan patterns.

Verified

ESI (Edge Side Includes)

Markup language used to assemble dynamic web content at the caching edge of a network.

Verified

E-commerce Conversion

The percentage of website visitors who complete a desired action, such as making a purchase.

Verified

Elasticsearch Ranking

The process by which Elasticsearch determines the order of search results based on relevance.

Verified

Engineering Metrics

Data points used to measure the efficiency and quality of a software engineering team.

Verified

Entity Framework

An open-source ORM framework for ADO.NET, part of the .NET ecosystem.

Verified

Ephemeral Environment

Short-lived, disposable environment created for testing a specific feature or pull request.

Verified

Error Budget

The amount of allowed unreliability in a service before the development of new features must stop.

Verified

F Group

F-Pattern

Eye-tracking finding that users scan pages in an F-shape. Place key content top-left accordingly.

Verified

Failover

Automatic switch to standby when primary fails. RPO and RTO are key metrics for failover design.

Verified

Favicon

Small icon shown in browser tabs and bookmarks. SVG format is the modern best practice.

Verified

FCP

First Contentful Paint. Time until the browser renders the first text or image. A key Web Vitals metric.

Verified

Feature Detection

Checking at runtime whether a browser supports an API before using it. More reliable than User-Agent detection.

Verified

Feature Flag

Toggling features on/off without code changes. Used for A/B tests and gradual rollouts.

Verified

Feedback Loop (UX)

UI immediately responding to user actions to confirm success or failure of their input.

Verified

Few-Shot Learning

ML approach learning from very few examples. Includes few-shot prompting by adding examples to LLM prompts.

Verified

FID

First Input Delay. Time from first user interaction to browser response. One of the Core Web Vitals.

Verified

FIDO2 / Passkey

Password-free login using device-bound cryptographic keys. Highly phishing-resistant standard.

Verified

FIFO Queue

First In First Out queue. Processes messages in the order received. The basic structure of message brokers.

Verified

Figma

Cloud-based UI design tool. Real-time collaboration, prototyping, and design system management.

Verified

File-based Routing

Routing where file/folder structure maps directly to URL paths. Used by Next.js, Nuxt, and SvelteKit.

Verified

Fine-Tuning

Further training a pre-trained model on domain-specific data to specialize its performance.

Verified

Firebase

Google's BaaS for mobile and web. Bundles Realtime DB, Firestore, Auth, and Hosting.

Verified

Fitts' Law

UI law: targets should be large and close. Time to reach a target scales with distance and size.

Verified

Flat Design

Design style using only simple shapes, colors, and typography without shadows or depth. Contrasts with Material Design.

Verified

Flexbox

CSS 1D layout model. display:flex enables flexible arrangement of children in row or column.

Verified

Fly.io

Cloud PaaS deploying containers globally. Runs apps close to users for low latency.

Verified

Focus Trap

Keeping keyboard focus inside a modal while it's open. Essential for keyboard accessibility.

Verified

Font Pairing

Combining different fonts for headings and body text to create typographic hierarchy and visual interest.

Verified

Font Subsetting

Extracting only used characters from a web font to reduce file size. Especially impactful for CJK fonts.

Verified

font-display

CSS property controlling how a web font displays during loading. 'swap' avoids invisible text.

Verified

Foreign Key

Column referencing another table's primary key. Enforces referential integrity in relational databases.

Verified

Form Accessibility

Form accessibility practices: linking labels, error messages with aria-describedby, and focus management.

Verified

Form Validation

Validating user input against rules. Often combined with react-hook-form and Zod in modern React.

Verified

Formatter

Tool that rewrites code to enforce consistent styling. Prettier is the industry standard.

Verified

Foundation Model

Large pre-trained model applicable to many tasks. GPT, Claude, and Gemini are prominent examples.

Verified

Framer Motion

Declarative animation library for React. Implements complex animations with a simple API.

Verified

Full-Text Index

DB feature storing words in an inverted index for fast full-text search queries.

Verified

Function Calling

LLM feature generating structured JSON arguments to invoke external APIs and tools. Key for AI agents.

Verified

Feature Engineering

Process of using domain knowledge to extract features from raw data that improve AI model performance.

Verified

Federated Learning

Machine learning technique that trains an algorithm across multiple decentralized devices holding local data.

Verified

File System API

Web API providing methods for reading and writing files and directories on the local file system.

Verified

FinOps

Framework for managing cloud operating expenses to balance speed, cost, and quality.

Verified

Flux Architecture

Application architecture used by Facebook for building client-side web applications with unidirectional data flow.

Verified

Focus Ring

Visual indicator showing which element currently has keyboard focus, critical for accessibility.

Verified

Frontend Infrastructure

Foundational tools and processes that support the development and delivery of web frontends.

Verified

Full Stack Trace

Report showing the sequence of function calls that led to an error during program execution.

Verified

Functional Programming

Programming paradigm where programs are constructed by applying and composing pure functions.

Verified

Fuzzy Matching

Technique of finding strings that match a pattern approximately rather than exactly.

Verified

G Group

GAN

Generative Adversarial Network. Generator and discriminator compete to produce realistic data.

Verified

Garbage Collection

Automatic reclaiming of unused memory. Used by Java, Go, JavaScript, and Python runtimes.

Verified

Gateway Pattern

Design pattern wrapping external service access for abstraction. Hides implementation details and enables swapping.

Verified

GCP

Google Cloud Platform. Known for BigQuery, Vertex AI, Cloud Run, and other cloud services.

Verified

Geo-Replication

Replicating data across geographically separated regions for disaster recovery and low-latency local access.

Verified

Gestalt Principles

Perceptual patterns (proximity, similarity, continuity) applied to group elements in UI design.

Verified

Git

Distributed version control system. Manages history and enables team collaboration via GitHub/GitLab.

Verified

Git Flow

Git branching strategy using feature, release, and hotfix branches for structured development.

Verified

Git Hooks

Scripts automatically running on Git events like pre-commit and pre-push. Managed with Husky.

Verified

Git Repository

Data store holding all code and its Git history. Exists as local and remote (GitHub/GitLab) copies.

Verified

GKE

Google Kubernetes Engine. Google Cloud's managed Kubernetes service.

Verified

Golden Ratio

Ratio of ~1:1.618. Found in nature and used in typography and layout for aesthetically pleasing proportions.

Verified

GPT

Generative Pre-trained Transformer. OpenAI's LLM series. GPT-4 powers ChatGPT.

Verified

GPU

Graphics Processing Unit. Massively parallel processor essential for training and running deep learning.

Verified

Graceful Shutdown

Server shutdown implementation completing in-flight requests before exiting to maintain data integrity.

Verified

Grafana Loki

Lightweight log aggregation system designed like Prometheus. Integrates natively with Grafana.

Verified

GraphQL

API query language. Clients specify exactly which fields they need, avoiding over/under-fetching.

Verified

GraphQL Federation

Architecture exposing multiple GraphQL APIs as a unified schema. Apollo pioneered the specification.

Verified

GraphQL Subscription

GraphQL operation type pushing real-time data from server to client over WebSocket.

Verified

Grid System

Layout foundation dividing the page into equal columns. 12-column grids are standard in web design.

Verified

Grounding

Anchoring LLM outputs to external verified sources to reduce hallucinations.

Verified

gRPC

Google's RPC framework using Protobuf and HTTP/2 for fast, type-safe inter-service communication.

Verified

gRPC Streaming

gRPC bidirectional streaming allowing real-time data exchange between client and server.

Verified

Guardrails

Controls preventing LLM outputs from being harmful or inaccurate via filtering and system prompts.

Verified

Guerrilla Testing

Quick, cheap UX research gathering feedback from random people, often in cafes.

Verified

gzip

Standard HTTP response compression. Enabling it on Nginx or CDN reduces transfer size significantly.

Verified

Game Loop

The central loop in a game program that processes inputs, updates game state, and renders the frame.

Verified

Generic Programming

Style of computer programming in which algorithms are written in terms of types to-be-specified-later.

Verified

Gestalt Proximity

Design principle stating that objects near each other tend to be perceived as a group.

Verified

Git Rebase

Git operation that rewrites commit history by moving a series of commits to a new base commit.

Verified

Golden Signals

Four critical metrics for monitoring service health: Latency, Traffic, Errors, and Saturation.

Verified

GPU Acceleration

Using a Graphics Processing Unit to speed up compute-intensive tasks like rendering or AI training.

Verified

GraphQL Introspection

The ability for a GraphQL client to query a schema for information about what queries it supports.

Verified

Green Computing

Practices and technologies aimed at reducing the environmental impact of computing systems.

Verified

Git Stash

Git command that temporarily shelves changes made to a working directory to clean it up.

Verified

H Group

Hallucination

LLM generating confident but factually incorrect content. Mitigated by RAG and fact-checking.

Verified

Haptic Feedback

Vibration feedback responding to touch. Improves realism and confirmation of actions in mobile UI.

Verified

Hardening

Disabling unnecessary features and services to minimize a system's attack surface.

Verified

HashiCorp Vault

General-purpose secret management tool for secrets, certs, and keys. Supports dynamic secret generation.

Verified

Headless CMS

Content Management System providing pure content via APIs, decoupling it from the frontend.

Verified

Headless UI

UI components providing behavior and accessibility without styles. Radix UI and Headless UI are popular.

Verified

Health Check

HTTP endpoint or command for load balancers and Kubernetes to verify service health. Typically at /health.

Verified

Helm

Kubernetes package manager using Charts to template and manage deployments.

Verified

Heuristic Evaluation

Usability inspection where experts evaluate UI against heuristics like Nielsen's 10 principles.

Verified

HEX

Color notation in #RRGGBB format. Standard in CSS. 8-digit form includes alpha transparency.

Verified

High Availability (HA)

Design principle maximizing uptime. Expressed as SLA percentages like 99.9% or 99.99%.

Verified

High-Fidelity Prototype

Interactive prototype closely resembling the final product. Used for user testing and dev handoff.

Verified

HMAC

Hash-based MAC using a secret key to verify message integrity and authenticity.

Verified

Honeypot

Decoy server or field luring attackers. Used to observe attack patterns or detect bots.

Verified

Horizontal Scaling

Scaling by adding more server instances. Contrasts with vertical scaling (upgrading server specs).

Verified

Hot Reload

Dev feature that applies code changes instantly without full page reload, preserving app state.

Verified

Hot Standby

Standby DB replica ready to take over immediately if the primary fails, minimizing failover time.

Verified

Hover State

UI element state on mouse hover. Communicates interactivity and affordance to the user.

Verified

HSL

CSS color model using Hue, Saturation, and Lightness. More intuitive for designers than RGB.

Verified

HTML Streaming

Server sending HTML to the browser incrementally as it generates it. Reduces time to first byte.

Verified

HTML5

Fifth revision of HTML. Added semantic tags, Canvas, Web Storage, Web Workers, and more.

Verified

HTTP Caching

Using Cache-Control and ETag headers to cache responses in browsers and proxies.

Verified

HTTP Idempotency Keys

Unique key attached to API requests enabling safe retries of duplicate requests after network failures.

Verified

HTTP Methods

HTTP operation types: GET, POST, PUT, PATCH, DELETE. The foundation of RESTful API design.

Verified

HTTP Status

200=OK, 400=Bad Req, 404=Not Found, 500=Server Error. Basic way to diagnose API responses.

Verified

HTTP/2

Modern HTTP protocol allowing multiplexing (multiple requests per connection), speeding up page loads.

Verified

HTTP/3

Latest HTTP version using QUIC over UDP. Faster connection setup and better packet loss resilience.

Verified

Hydration

Attaching JavaScript to server-rendered HTML to make it interactive on the client. Key in Next.js and Nuxt.

Verified

Hydration Mismatch

Error when SSR HTML doesn't match client render output. Often caused by dates, random values, or browser APIs.

Verified

Hyperparameter

Config values like learning rate and batch size controlling the training process, not learned from data.

Verified

Hystrix

Netflix's Java circuit breaker library. Now in maintenance mode; Resilience4j is the recommended successor.

Verified

Hydration (UX)

The process of attaching JavaScript to server-rendered HTML to make it interactive.

Verified

Hardware Acceleration

The use of specialized computer hardware to perform functions faster than is possible using custom software.

Verified

Hash Collision

Situation that occurs when two distinct inputs produce the same output hash value.

Verified

Headless Browser

Web browser without a graphical user interface, controlled programmatically for testing.

Verified

Heuristic Usability

Usability inspection method where evaluators compare a UI against a set of recognized design principles.

Verified

High Availability

System design approach providing a high level of operational performance and uptime.

Verified

Horizontal Sharding

Database partitioning pattern that separates rows of a table across multiple database instances.

Verified

Human-in-the-loop

Process where humans and AI interact to improve the accuracy and accountability of an automated system.

Verified

HSTS

Security header that forces browsers to interact with a website only via HTTPS.

Verified

Huffman Coding

Algorithm used for lossless data compression based on the frequency of occurrence of characters.

Verified

I Group

i18n

Numeronym for Internationalization. Designing apps to support multiple languages and locales.

Verified

IaC

Infrastructure as Code. Managing infrastructure configuration as code with Terraform or Ansible.

Verified

IAM

Identity and Access Management. Controls who can do what to which resources. AWS IAM is the prime example.

Verified

Icon Design

Visual symbol representing actions or concepts. Consistency, clarity, and sizing are key considerations.

Verified

Idempotency

Property where repeating the same operation has the same result. GET, PUT, DELETE are idempotent.

Verified

IdP

Identity Provider. Manages identities and asserts them to other services. Auth0 and Okta are examples.

Verified

IDS / IPS

Intrusion Detection/Prevention System. Detects and blocks unauthorized network or host access.

Verified

iframe

HTML element embedding another web page. Requires careful security with sandbox and CSP restrictions.

Verified

Image Optimization

Combining WebP conversion, compression, lazy loading, and proper srcset to speed up page loads.

Verified

Image Segmentation

Computer vision task classifying each pixel into a class. Used in autonomous driving and medical imaging.

Verified

Image Sprite

Combining multiple images into one to reduce HTTP requests. Position controlled via CSS background-position.

Verified

Immer

Library allowing mutable-style updates to immutable state. Often combined with Zustand or Redux Toolkit.

Verified

Immutable Infrastructure

Operational practice always deploying fresh images instead of modifying servers. Prevents configuration drift.

Verified

Indent

Code indentation. Essential for readability. Usually 2 or 4 spaces.

Verified

Index File

Default file for a directory (index.html, index.ts). Entry point accessible by path without specifying the filename.

Verified

Inference

Using a trained model to make predictions. Latency and cost optimization are key concerns.

Verified

Information Architecture

Discipline structuring and organizing content for effective navigation and findability.

Verified

Ingress

Kubernetes resource managing external HTTP routing into cluster services. Also handles TLS termination.

Verified

Ingress Controller

Controller implementing Kubernetes Ingress rules. Nginx Ingress Controller and Traefik are popular options.

Verified

INP

Interaction to Next Paint. Measures responsiveness from user input to next paint. Replaced FID in Core Web Vitals.

Verified

Input Debounce

UX pattern waiting for a pause in typing before sending an API request, avoiding per-keystroke calls.

Verified

Input Event

DOM events for keyboard, mouse, and touch interactions. The input event is standard for text input handling.

Verified

Insecure Deserialization

Vulnerability where deserializing untrusted data leads to arbitrary code execution. A recurring OWASP Top 10 item.

Verified

Instruction Tuning

Fine-tuning LLMs on instruction-formatted data to improve their ability to follow user directions.

Verified

Integration Test

Test verifying that multiple modules or services work together correctly.

Verified

Interaction Cost

Total cognitive and physical effort (clicks, scrolls, decisions) required for a user to reach their goal.

Verified

Intersection Observer

Browser API efficiently watching when elements enter the viewport. Used for lazy loading and infinite scroll.

Verified

IP Address

Network address identifying a device. IPv4 is 32-bit (e.g. 192.168.0.1); IPv6 is 128-bit.

Verified

IP Allowlist

Allowing requests only from specified IP addresses. Used to restrict access to admin panels.

Verified

IPC

Inter-Process Communication. Mechanisms for data exchange between processes: pipes, sockets, shared memory.

Verified

Island Architecture

Rendering pattern placing interactive JS components as 'islands' in otherwise static HTML. Used by Astro.

Verified

Isomorphic / Universal JS

Design where the same JS code runs on both server and client. Adopted by Next.js and Nuxt.

Verified

Istio

Service mesh for Kubernetes providing traffic management, mTLS auth, and observability declaratively.

Verified

Idempotency

Property of certain operations that can be applied multiple times without changing the result beyond the initial application.

Verified

Immutable Infrastructure

Approach to managing software services where components are replaced rather than changed in place.

Verified

Incremental Build

Software build process that only recompiles or re-links files that have been modified.

Verified

Index Scan

Retrieval technique where a database searches through an index to find specific row locations.

Verified

Indicator (UI)

Visual element like a badge or light that communicates the state or progress of a process.

Verified

In-memory Database

Database management system that primarily relies on main memory (RAM) for data storage.

Verified

Inode

Data structure on a file system that stores information about a file or directory, except its name and content.

Verified

Input Latency

Delay between a user action (like a click) and the response being visible on the screen.

Verified

Instruction Set

Complete set of commands that a CPU can understand and execute directly.

Verified

Intranet

Private network accessible only to an organization's staff, isolated from the public internet.

Verified

Inverted Index

Index data structure storing a mapping from content, such as words, to its locations in a document set.

Verified

I/O Bound

Condition in which the time it takes to complete a computation is determined by the period spent waiting for I/O operations.

Verified

IoT (Internet of Things)

Network of physical objects embedded with sensors and software for connecting and exchanging data.

Verified

IP Spoofing

Creation of IP packets with a false source IP address to impersonate another computer system.

Verified

ISA (Instruction Set Architecture)

Abstract model of a computer that defines the set of instructions the CPU can execute.

Verified

ISM (Industrial, Scientific and Medical band)

Radio frequency bands reserved internationally for industrial, scientific, and medical purposes.

Verified

Isomorphic JavaScript

JavaScript applications that can run both on the client and the server using the same code.

Verified

J Group

Jamstack

JavaScript, APIs, Markup architecture. Decouples static UI from dynamic backends.

Verified

JavaScript Runtime

Engine and environment executing JavaScript. V8/SpiderMonkey in browsers; Node.js, Deno, Bun on servers.

Verified

Jenkins

Open-source CI/CD automation server. Highly extensible with a large plugin ecosystem.

Verified

JIT Compiler

Just-In-Time compiler. Converts code to native at runtime for speed. Used in JVM and V8.

Verified

Job Queue

Task queue for running slow jobs (email, image processing) asynchronously. Bull/BullMQ are popular.

Verified

Jobs to Be Done

Framework focusing on the fundamental motivation (job) driving users to adopt a product.

Verified

Jotai

Simple atom-based React state management library. Inspired by Recoil with a minimal API.

Verified

JPEG

Lossy compression image format for photos. No transparency, but universally supported.

Verified

jsdom

Library emulating browser DOM APIs in Node.js. Used as the DOM environment in Jest and other test runners.

Verified

JSON

JavaScript Object Notation. Standard lightweight key-value format for APIs.

Verified

JSON Schema

Specification for validating JSON data structure and types. Used for API request and response definitions.

Verified

JSON-LD

JSON format for Schema.org structured data to communicate page semantics to search engines.

Verified

JSONB

PostgreSQL binary JSON storage type. Supports indexing on keys for fast queries, outperforming the json type.

Verified

JSX

Syntax extension for writing HTML-like UI inside JavaScript. Used in React, transpiled by Babel.

Verified

JWT

JSON Web Token. Widely used for auth. Payload is readable by anyone, but signature detects tampering.

Verified

JWT Best Practices

JWT security guidelines: reject alg:none, use short expiry, prefer RS256/ES256, always transmit over HTTPS.

Verified

JWT Refresh Token

Long-lived token used to issue new short-lived access tokens. Regular rotation is recommended.

Verified

Jitter

Variation in the delay of received packets, which can cause distortions in real-time communication.

Verified

JIT Compiler

Compilation done during the execution of a program at runtime, rather than prior to execution.

Verified

K Group

k6

Modern load testing tool with JavaScript scripting. Easy to integrate into CI/CD pipelines.

Verified

Kerning

Adjusting space between specific letter pairs for visually even text spacing.

Verified

key prop

Unique identifier on each React list item helping the reconciler efficiently diff and update lists.

Verified

Keyframe

Defined style state at a specific point in a CSS animation. Written with @keyframes using from/to or %.

Verified

Keylogger

Software or hardware recording keystrokes. Used as malware to steal credentials.

Verified

Knowledge Graph

Database representing entities and their relationships as a graph. Enhances RAG and search accuracy.

Verified

Kubernetes (K8s)

Container orchestration system. Automates deployment and scaling of massive container clusters.

Verified

Kubernetes RBAC

Kubernetes Role-Based Access Control. Manages permissions for users and service accounts with Roles and Bindings.

Verified

KV Cache

Caching Key/Value matrices in Transformer attention to avoid recomputation. Significantly speeds up inference.

Verified

Kanban

Visual system for managing work as it moves through a process, often used in agile development.

Verified

Kerberos

Computer network authentication protocol that works on the basis of tickets to allow nodes to communicate securely.

Verified

Keyframe Animation

Technique where the start and end points of a transition are defined, and intermediate frames are automatically generated.

Verified

Kubernetes (K8s)

Open-source system for automating deployment, scaling, and management of containerized applications.

Verified

L Group

l10n

Numeronym for Localization. Adapting an i18n app for a specific locale, including dates and currency.

Verified

LangChain

Python/TS framework for building LLM apps. Widely used for RAG pipelines and agent construction.

Verified

LangSmith

Platform by LangChain for debugging, testing, evaluating, and monitoring LLM applications.

Verified

Latency

Delay from request to response. Analyzed with percentiles like p50, p95, p99.

Verified

Latent Space

High-dimensional vector space where a model encodes input data. Nearby points share semantic similarity.

Verified

Layout Shift

Page elements shifting due to late-loading images or fonts. Prevented by specifying explicit width/height.

Verified

Lazy Image Loading

Performance technique loading off-screen images lazily using IntersectionObserver or loading='lazy'.

Verified

Lazy Loading

Loading components or routes only when needed. Splits bundles to improve Time to Interactive.

Verified

LCP

Largest Contentful Paint. Time for the largest content element to appear. A Google Core Web Vital.

Verified

LDAP

Lightweight Directory Access Protocol. Used in enterprise identity systems like Active Directory.

Verified

Leader Election

Algorithm electing a single leader among distributed nodes. Implemented with Raft in etcd and Zookeeper.

Verified

Leading (行送り)

Line spacing. Set with CSS line-height. Typically 1.5–1.7 recommended for body text readability.

Verified

Least Privilege

Security principle granting only the minimum permissions needed. Critical for IAM and DB design.

Verified

Lighthouse

Google's web quality tool. Scores Performance, Accessibility, SEO, and Best Practices out of 100.

Verified

lint-staged

Tool running linters and formatters only on staged files. Used for pre-commit quality checks.

Verified

Linter

Static code analysis tool that flags bugs or stylistic errors. ESLint is the primary example.

Verified

LlamaIndex

Python framework connecting LLMs with data. Simplifies ingestion, indexing, and querying pipelines.

Verified

LLM

Large Language Model. Pre-trained on massive text. Examples include GPT-4 and Claude.

Verified

LLM Evaluation

Methods for measuring LLM output quality: BLEU, ROUGE, human eval, and LLM-as-a-judge approaches.

Verified

Load Balancer

Hardware or software distributing traffic evenly across servers for high availability and throughput.

Verified

Loading State

UI state during async data fetching shown with skeletons, spinners, or placeholders.

Verified

localStorage

Browser API for persistent key-value storage. ~5MB limit, synchronous API. Part of Web Storage.

Verified

Log Aggregation

Collecting and centralizing logs from multiple services for searching and analysis. ELK Stack and Loki are common.

Verified

Log Level

Log severity hierarchy: DEBUG < INFO < WARN < ERROR < FATAL. Controls output volume in production.

Verified

LoRA

Low-Rank Adaptation. Efficient fine-tuning updating only a small fraction of model parameters.

Verified

Lottie

Lightweight animation library playing After Effects animations exported as JSON on web and mobile.

Verified

Low-Fidelity Prototype

Rough prototype using paper sketches or wireframes for early concept validation.

Verified

LRU Cache

Least Recently Used cache eviction policy. Removes the least recently accessed items first when full.

Verified

LSTM

Long Short-Term Memory RNN designed to learn long-range dependencies. Dominant before Transformers.

Verified

Lua

Lightweight scripting language embedded in games (Roblox), Nginx, and Redis.

Verified

L3 Cache

Level 3 cache, a memory bank built into the CPU that is shared among multiple cores.

Verified

Lerna

Tool for managing JavaScript projects with multiple packages in a single repository.

Verified

Lexical Scoping

Scoping method where the accessibility of variables is determined by their location in the source code.

Verified

LWP (Lightweight Process)

Unit of execution that shares the same address space and resources as other processes, like threads.

Verified

Linear Scanning

Simple search algorithm that checks every element in a list sequentially until a match is found.

Verified

Load Balanced Cluster

Group of servers that use a load balancer to distribute request traffic evenly.

Verified

LocalStorage Limit

The data storage cap for LocalStorage in a web browser, typically around 5 megabytes.

Verified

Logic Gate

Idealized model of computation or a physical electronic device implementing a Boolean function.

Verified

Long Polling

Web development technique used to push information from a server to a client as soon as data becomes available.

Verified

Low-code Development

Approach to software development that requires little to no coding to build applications and processes.

Verified

M Group

map / filter / reduce

JavaScript's fundamental array transformation trio. Essential for functional-style data manipulation.

Verified

Markdown

Lightweight markup language using simple symbols for headings, lists, and links.

Verified

Materialized View

DB view storing precomputed query results on disk. Greatly speeds up complex aggregation queries.

Verified

MCP

Model Context Protocol. Anthropic's standard for LLMs to interact with external tools and data sources.

Verified

MD5

128-bit hash algorithm. Vulnerable to collision attacks; discouraged for modern security.

Verified

MDX

Markdown format supporting embedded JSX. Enables interactive components in docs and blog posts.

Verified

Media Query

CSS syntax switching styles based on screen size or device features. Written with @media.

Verified

Memoization

Caching function results to skip recalculation for identical inputs. Only valid for pure functions.

Verified

Memory Leak

Program failing to release unused memory, causing it to accumulate. Leads to OOM errors in long-running servers.

Verified

Mental Model

User's subjective understanding of how a system works. Good UI matches users' mental models.

Verified

Message Broker

Middleware mediating async messages between services. Kafka, RabbitMQ, and SQS are common choices.

Verified

Message Queue

FIFO queue for asynchronous inter-service communication. Decouples producers and consumers for resilience.

Verified

Message Schema

Schema defining message structure in brokers like Kafka. Avro and Protobuf are common formats.

Verified

MFA / 2FA

Multi-Factor Authentication. Combining password with possession (e.g. phone) to highly secure accounts.

Verified

Micro Frontend

Architecture splitting the frontend into independent apps per team. Frontend equivalent of microservices.

Verified

Microcopy

Short UI text on buttons, labels, errors, and placeholders. Has outsized impact on UX.

Verified

Microinteraction

Small, contained interactions like button animations or notification badges giving user feedback.

Verified

Microservices

Structuring an app as a collection of small, independent services. Scalable but complex to manage.

Verified

Middleware

Logic running between request and response. Used for auth, logging, and CORS.

Verified

Minify

Removing whitespace and comments to drastically reduce file sizes for production.

Verified

MITM

Man-in-the-Middle attack intercepting and potentially altering communications. TLS/HTTPS prevents it.

Verified

Mixture of Experts

Architecture activating only a subset of 'expert' modules per input. Enables efficient scaling.

Verified

MLOps

Practices for production ML: experiment tracking, model registry, and continuous monitoring.

Verified

Mobile-First

Design approach starting from the smallest screen and enhancing for larger screens. The recommended modern approach.

Verified

Model Distillation

Transferring knowledge from a large teacher model to a smaller student model for efficient inference.

Verified

Module Federation

Webpack feature allowing multiple builds to share components at runtime. Key for micro frontends.

Verified

Module System

System for splitting JavaScript code into files. ES Modules (import/export) is the current standard.

Verified

MongoDB

Document-oriented NoSQL DB storing data in JSON-like BSON format with schema flexibility.

Verified

Monolithic Architecture

Traditional architecture with all features in a single application. Simple but can become hard to scale and change.

Verified

Monorepo

Managing multiple projects in a single repository. Makes sharing code and managing versions easier.

Verified

Mood Board

Collage of images, colors, and textures defining the visual mood and direction of a design.

Verified

Motion Design

Using animation to communicate state changes, feedback, and navigation in UI.

Verified

mTLS

Mutual TLS. Both client and server authenticate with certificates. Used in zero-trust architectures.

Verified

Multi-Tenancy

SaaS design serving multiple customers from one app while isolating their data securely.

Verified

Multimodal AI

AI model processing multiple modalities like text, images, and audio. GPT-4V and Gemini are examples.

Verified

Mutation Observer

Browser API that asynchronously observes DOM mutations like added/removed nodes or attribute changes.

Verified

MVP

Minimum Viable Product. Delivering core value with minimal features to maximize learning and iteration.

Verified

MySQL

The most widely used open-source relational DB. Powers WordPress and countless web applications.

Verified

MCP

Model Context Protocol. An open standard for AI models to securely interact with external tools and datasets.

Verified

Micro-interactions

Small, subtle visual transitions or animations triggered by user actions like hovering or clicking.

Verified

Macro-task Queue

Queue in the JS event loop that handles tasks like timers, I/O, and UI rendering.

Verified

Man-in-the-middle (MITM)

Cyberattack where the attacker secretly relays and possibly alters the communications between two parties.

Verified

Markup Language

System for annotating a document in a way that is syntactically distinguishable from the text, like HTML.

Verified

Max Pooling

Sample-based discretization process in CNNs that selects the maximum value from a region.

Verified

Message Broker

Intermediary program module that translates a message from the formal messaging protocol of the sender.

Verified

Micro-task

Small, high-priority task in the JS event loop, such as Promise reaction or Mutation Observer.

Verified

Mixed Content

Situation where initial HTML is loaded over a secure HTTPS connection, but other resources are loaded over HTTP.

Verified

Mock Object

Simulated object that mimics the behavior of a real object in controlled ways for testing.

Verified

Monolithic Architecture

Software design where the entire application is built as a single, unified unit.

Verified

N Group

N+1 Problem

ORM anti-pattern causing N extra queries for N records. Solved by eager loading or data loaders.

Verified

Namespace

Kubernetes logical grouping for resources. Used to separate teams or environments like dev/prod.

Verified

NATS

Lightweight, high-performance cloud-native messaging system supporting Pub/Sub, queues, and streams.

Verified

Negative Space

White space around elements. Intentional negative space improves readability and focus.

Verified

Neon

Serverless PostgreSQL cloud service with branching and scale-to-zero capabilities.

Verified

Neural Network

Machine learning model inspired by biological neurons. Composed of input, hidden, and output layers.

Verified

Next.js

React-based full-stack framework supporting SSR, SSG, and ISR. The most widely used React framework.

Verified

Next.js Middleware

Next.js feature processing requests at the Edge for redirects, rewrites, and header injection. Used for auth guards.

Verified

NextAuth.js

Authentication library for Next.js supporting OAuth, email, and credential-based login out of the box.

Verified

Nginx

High-performance web server and reverse proxy. Used for static files, load balancing, and TLS termination.

Verified

Nginx Config

Nginx configuration file declaratively defining virtual hosts, proxies, caching, and TLS via server/location blocks.

Verified

NLP

Natural Language Processing. Technology enabling computers to understand and process human language.

Verified

nmap

Open-source standard tool for scanning hosts and open ports on a network.

Verified

Nonce

Random value allowing specific inline scripts under CSP. Prevents replay attacks.

Verified

noop

Empty function doing nothing (no operation). Used as default callback or test stub.

Verified

NoSQL

Non-relational databases (MongoDB, Redis). Known for schema flexibility and high performance.

Verified

npm

Node Package Manager. The largest software registry used to install JavaScript libraries.

Verified

NPS

Net Promoter Score. Measures customer loyalty by asking likelihood of recommending the service (0-10).

Verified

Nuxt

Vue-based full-stack framework. The Vue equivalent of Next.js, with easy SSR and SSG support.

Verified

Naive Bayes

Simple probabilistic classifiers based on applying Bayes' theorem with strong independence assumptions.

Verified

NAS (Network Attached Storage)

File-level computer data storage server connected to a computer network providing data access.

Verified

Negative Lookahead

Regex syntax that matches a point where the following text does not match a specified pattern.

Verified

N-gram

Contiguous sequence of n items from a given sample of text or speech.

Verified

N+1 Problem

Inefficiency in ORMs where a single query for parent records triggers N additional queries for child records.

Verified

Non-volatile Memory

Type of computer memory that can retrieve stored information even after having been power cycled.

Verified

NoSQL (Non-relational)

Broad class of database management systems that differ from the traditional relational model.

Verified

O Group

OAuth

Standard authorization protocol for delegating access without sharing passwords.

Verified

OAuth Scope

OAuth mechanism limiting what resources an access token can access. Applies the least privilege principle.

Verified

Object Detection

CV task detecting object locations with bounding boxes and classifying them. YOLO is a well-known model.

Verified

Object Storage

Storage format saving files in a flat namespace within buckets. S3 and GCS are examples. No directory hierarchy.

Verified

object-fit

CSS property controlling how img or video fills its container. Values include cover, contain, and fill.

Verified

Observability

System property enabling internal state visibility via the three pillars: logs, metrics, and traces.

Verified

Observer Pattern

Design pattern automatically notifying observers when an object's state changes. Related to useEffect.

Verified

OG Image

Image shown as thumbnail on social media shares. Next.js generates it dynamically via opengraph-image.tsx.

Verified

OGP

Open Graph Protocol. Meta tags defining title, desc, and image for social media link previews.

Verified

OIDC

OpenID Connect. Authentication layer on OAuth 2.0 issuing an ID Token. Foundation of SSO.

Verified

Onboarding

UX flow guiding new users to quickly understand and experience a product's core value.

Verified

Open Redirect

Vulnerability redirecting to unvalidated URLs, enabling phishing. Mitigated by whitelisting redirect destinations.

Verified

OpenAI API

HTTP API service providing access to OpenAI models. Endpoints include Chat Completions, Embeddings, and Vision.

Verified

OpenAPI

Standard YAML/JSON format for describing REST APIs. Combined with Swagger UI for auto-generated docs.

Verified

OpenAPI Spec

Machine-readable YAML/JSON describing REST API endpoints, parameters, and responses. Enables code generation.

Verified

OpenTelemetry

CNCF framework standardizing observability data collection for logs, metrics, and traces. Vendor-neutral.

Verified

Optimistic Locking

DB concurrency control checking a version number on update and requiring retry only on conflict.

Verified

Optimistic UI

Immediately updating UI assuming success before server responds. Rolls back on failure.

Verified

ORM

Object-Relational Mapping. Maps database tables to code objects, abstracting raw SQL queries.

Verified

ORM Lazy Loading

ORM behavior loading related data only when accessed. A common source of N+1 query problems.

Verified

Overfitting

Model fitting training data too closely, losing generalization. Addressed with dropout and regularization.

Verified

OWASP

Organization promoting web app security. OWASP Top 10 lists the most critical web vulnerabilities.

Verified

Oxc

Rust-based ultra-fast JS/TS toolchain providing a parser, linter, and transformer.

Verified

Open Source

Software with source code available for anyone to inspect, modify, and enhance. Maintained by communities.

Verified

OAuth 2.0

Industry-standard protocol for authorization that focuses on client developer simplicity.

Verified

Object Pool Pattern

Design pattern that uses a set of initialized objects kept in a pool rather than destroying them.

Verified

Observability (o11y)

The ability to measure the internal states of a system by examining its outputs (logs, traces, metrics).

Verified

Off-screen Rendering

The process of rendering content into a buffer other than the screen's main display area.

Verified

One-hot Encoding

Representation of categorical variables as binary vectors with a single high (1) bit.

Verified

OpenAPI Specification

Standard for describing RESTful APIs that allows both humans and computers to discover capabilities.

Verified

OpenID Connect (OIDC)

Simple identity layer on top of the OAuth 2.0 protocol for verifying user identity.

Verified

Operator Precedence

Collection of rules that reflect which procedures to perform first in a given mathematical expression.

Verified

OCR

Technology used to distinguish printed or handwritten text characters inside digital images of physical documents.

Verified

OSI Reference Model

Conceptual model that characterizes the communication functions of a telecommunication system into seven layers.

Verified

Overfitting

Modeling error that occurs when a function is too closely fit to a limited set of data points.

Verified

P Group

package-lock.json

Lock file recording exact installed package versions. Guarantees reproducible builds across environments.

Verified

Pain Point

Friction or frustration a user experiences with a product. Discovered through UX research and addressed in design.

Verified

Participatory Design

Involving end users as co-designers in the design process. Directly incorporates stakeholder perspectives.

Verified

Password Hashing

Storing passwords as one-way hashes with bcrypt or Argon2. Plain SHA-256 is insufficient.

Verified

Path Traversal

Attack injecting path separators to read arbitrary files on the server outside the intended directory.

Verified

PEFT

Parameter-Efficient Fine-Tuning. Techniques like LoRA adapting models by training only a small subset of parameters.

Verified

Penetration Testing

Security assessment where experts simulate real attacks to find vulnerabilities.

Verified

Performance Budget

Constraints on page load time and asset sizes. Can be enforced automatically in CI pipelines.

Verified

Perplexity

Metric indicating how well a language model predicts text. Lower perplexity indicates better model quality.

Verified

Persistent Volume

Kubernetes storage resource persisting data beyond the lifecycle of individual containers.

Verified

Persona

Research-based profile of a typical user. Aligns design decisions and team communication.

Verified

pgvector

Open-source PostgreSQL extension adding vector storage and similarity search. Used for building RAG systems.

Verified

Phishing

Fraudulent sites or emails mimicking legitimate services to steal credentials. FIDO2/Passkeys resist this.

Verified

PKCE

OAuth 2.0 extension preventing authorization code interception attacks. Mandatory for SPAs and mobile.

Verified

PlanetScale

Serverless MySQL database platform known for its branching workflow for schema changes.

Verified

Playwright

Microsoft's E2E test framework. Tests Chromium, Firefox, and WebKit with one unified API.

Verified

PNG

Lossless image format supporting alpha transparency. Ideal for logos and screenshots.

Verified

pnpm

npm-compatible package manager with dramatically reduced disk usage and faster installs.

Verified

Pod

Kubernetes' smallest deployable unit. Groups containers sharing the same IP and storage volumes.

Verified

Polyfill

Code adding modern APIs to older browsers. Enables Promises, fetch, etc. in unsupported environments.

Verified

Portainer

Browser-based GUI for managing Docker and Kubernetes without command-line knowledge.

Verified

Positional Encoding

Mechanism adding position information to token embeddings in Transformers, which have no inherent order.

Verified

PostCSS

Tool transforming CSS with JavaScript plugins. Autoprefixer and Tailwind CSS run as PostCSS plugins.

Verified

PostgreSQL

Highly capable open-source relational DB. Beloved for JSON support, full-text search, and extensibility.

Verified

Preact

3KB React alternative with nearly identical API. Used where bundle size and performance are critical.

Verified

Prefetch

Pre-fetching resources the user is likely to need next to speed up navigation.

Verified

Prerendering

Server pre-generating and caching HTML. Similar to SSG but can handle dynamic requests.

Verified

Primary Key

Column uniquely identifying each DB record. Must be unique and non-null. Automatically indexed.

Verified

Prisma

Type-safe ORM for TypeScript. Auto-generates DB clients from schema and manages migrations.

Verified

Process Forking

OS feature creating child processes as copies of the parent. Node.js cluster module uses it to leverage multiple CPUs.

Verified

Progressive Disclosure

UX pattern revealing information progressively in response to user actions, reducing cognitive load.

Verified

Progressive Enhancement

Web strategy providing core content first, then enhancing for capable browsers.

Verified

Progressive JPEG

JPEG encoding displaying a blurry image first, then progressively sharpening. Improves perceived load speed.

Verified

Prometheus

Time-series metrics monitoring system. Typically paired with Grafana for visualization.

Verified

Prompt Engineering

Crafting inputs to get desired LLM outputs. Techniques include few-shot, CoT, and role prompting.

Verified

Prompt Injection

Attack overriding or bypassing an LLM's system prompt via malicious input. A key AI agent security concern.

Verified

Protocol Buffers

Google's binary serialization format. Faster and smaller than JSON. Used by gRPC.

Verified

Prototype Fidelity

How closely a prototype resembles the final product. Choose lo-fi or hi-fi based on what you're testing.

Verified

Pub/Sub

Messaging pattern where publishers send messages to subscribers. Enables loose coupling.

Verified

Pull Request

GitHub workflow requesting code review before merging to base branch. Also triggers CI/CD pipelines.

Verified

Pull to Refresh

Mobile pattern pulling screen down to refresh content. Popularized by iOS, now ubiquitous.

Verified

PWA

Progressive Web Apps. Makes web apps installable and offline-capable like native apps.

Verified

px (ピクセル)

Absolute unit (one screen dot). For responsive layouts, combining with rem/% is recommended.

Verified

P0 Priority

Highest level of importance for a bug or task that requires immediate attention and resolution.

Verified

Packet Switching

Digital networking communication method that groups all transmitted data into suitably sized blocks.

Verified

Page Fault

Interrupt raised by hardware when a running program accesses a memory page that is not in main memory.

Verified

Parity Bit

Bit added to a string of binary code that serves as a simple form of error detection.

Verified

Partial Application

Process of fixing a number of arguments to a function, producing another function of smaller arity.

Verified

Passkey

Passwordless authentication method using biometric sensors or PINs stored on a user's device.

Verified

Peer Review

Process where a software engineer's code is examined by colleagues to improve quality and maintainability.

Verified

Penetration Testing

Authorized simulated cyberattack on a computer system, performed to evaluate the security of the system.

Verified

Perceived Performance

How fast a user thinks a website or application feels, regardless of its objective load speed.

Verified

Persistent Connection

Digital communication link that remains open for further requests after the first request is completed.

Verified

Personalization (AI)

Process of tailoring experiences or content to an individual's context and preferences using AI.

Verified

PKI (Public Key Infrastructure)

Set of roles and policies needed to manage and distribute digital certificates and public-key encryption.

Verified

Pixel Density

Measurement of the number of pixels within a specific area of a screen, usually measured in PPI.

Verified

Point-to-Point (P2P)

Communications connection between two nodes or endpoints directly.

Verified

Poisoning Attack

Type of adversarial attack that pollutes the training data of an AI model to compromise its performance.

Verified

Polyglot Persistence

Concept of using different data storage technologies to handle varying data storage needs within a system.

Verified

Pre-rendering

Generating the content of a web page before it is actually requested to provide near-instant loading.

Verified

Predictive Analytics

Branch of advanced analytics that uses historical data and AI to make predictions about future outcomes.

Verified

Prefetching

Retrieving data from storage into a cache before it is actually needed to reduce latency.

Verified

Preflight Request

CORS request that checks to see if the CORS protocol is understood and a server is aware of specific methods.

Verified

Prepared Statement

Feature used to execute the same or similar database statements repeatedly with high efficiency and security.

Verified

Principle of Least Privilege

Security concept in which a user is given the minimum levels of access necessary to complete a task.

Verified

Private Endpoint

Interface that uses a private IP address from your virtual network to connect you privately to a service.

Verified

PAM (Privileged Access Management)

Framework of security technologies used to secure and monitor privileged user accounts.

Verified

Probabilistic Data Structure

Data structure that provides approximate answers to queries with a small, predictable error rate but low memory use.

Verified

Procedural Generation

Method of creating data algorithmically as opposed to manually, often used in video games.

Verified

Profiling Tool

Software tool used to analyze the performance of a computer program at the code level.

Verified

Promise.race

JS method that returns a promise that fulfills or rejects as soon as one of the promises in an iterable settles.

Verified

Proof of Work (PoW)

Consensus mechanism requiring participants to perform computational work to secure a network.

Verified

Property Descriptor

Metadata associated with an object property, describing its behavior like writability and enumerability.

Verified

Protocol Buffers (Protobuf)

Language-neutral mechanisms for serializing structured data, developed by Google.

Verified

Prototyping (UX)

Process of creating a preliminary model of a product to test concepts and get feedback.

Verified

Pure Function

Function that has no side effects and returns the same output for the same input every time.

Verified

Post-Quantum Cryptography

Cryptographic algorithms thought to be secure against a cryptanalytic attack by a quantum computer.

Verified

Q Group

QR Code

2D barcode storing URLs or text. Easily scannable by smartphone cameras.

Verified

Quantization

Converting model weights to lower precision (INT8) to speed up inference and reduce memory.

Verified

Query String

URL parameters after ? in key=value format. Used for filters, search queries, and pagination.

Verified

Qwik

Resumable framework delaying JS download and execution as long as possible for near-zero initial load.

Verified

Quadtree

Tree data structure in which each internal node has exactly four children, used for spatial indexing.

Verified

Quantum Cryptography

Encryption methods that leverage the principles of quantum mechanics to create secure communication.

Verified

Query Optimizer

Database component that examines many different strategies to execute a query and chooses the most efficient one.

Verified

Queue Backlog

The number of tasks or requests in a processing queue that are waiting to be executed.

Verified

R Group

RabbitMQ

Popular AMQP-based message broker with sophisticated routing patterns and a rich plugin ecosystem.

Verified

RAG

Retrieval-Augmented Generation. Combining LLM with retrieved external knowledge for more accurate answers.

Verified

Rate Limit

Restricting the number of total requests a user can make to an API in a given timeframe.

Verified

Rate Limiting Algorithms

Rate limiting algorithms: Token Bucket, Leaky Bucket, and Fixed Window. Each suits different use cases.

Verified

RBAC

Role-Based Access Control. Assigning permissions to roles and roles to users.

Verified

React 18

React major version adding Concurrent Mode, enhanced Suspense, useTransition, and Server Components.

Verified

React Native

Framework using React's component model to build native iOS and Android apps.

Verified

React Portal

React feature for rendering children outside the parent DOM node. Ideal for modals and tooltips.

Verified

React Reconciler

React's algorithm computing Virtual DOM diffs and determining minimal DOM updates. Implemented as Fiber.

Verified

React Server Component

React 18 component running on the server without sending JS to the client. Reduces bundle size.

Verified

React.memo

React HOC that skips re-rendering when props haven't changed. Used for performance optimization.

Verified

Read Replica

Read-only DB instance replicated from the primary. Distributes read load and improves performance.

Verified

Recoil

Facebook's atom-based React state management library with declarative async selectors.

Verified

Recommender System

System predicting items a user will like based on history and preferences. Uses collaborative filtering and matrix factorization.

Verified

Redis

In-memory key-value store. Used for caching, sessions, Pub/Sub, and job queues due to its speed.

Verified

Redis Cluster

Redis distributed mode auto-sharding data across nodes for scale-out and high availability.

Verified

Redux

Predictable unidirectional state management library. Redux Toolkit greatly improved its developer experience.

Verified

Reflow

Browser recalculating element layout after DOM/CSS changes. Excessive reflows severely hurt performance.

Verified

Regex (正規表現)

Pattern matching for strings. Essential for validation, extraction, and replacing text.

Verified

Reinforcement Learning

ML paradigm where an agent learns a policy to maximize reward through trial and error with an environment.

Verified

Release Management

Process managing software version planning, testing, deployment, and announcement. Uses SemVer and CHANGELOG.

Verified

rem

Relative unit based on root font size. Accessible and highly recommended for responsive design.

Verified

Render Props

React pattern where a component accepts a function prop that returns JSX for logic reuse.

Verified

Replication

Copying DB data to multiple servers in real time. Read Replicas scale read-heavy workloads.

Verified

Repository Pattern

Pattern isolating DB access from business logic, making it easy to swap data sources.

Verified

requestIdleCallback

API scheduling low-priority tasks during browser idle time to minimize main thread impact.

Verified

Residual Network

Deep neural network with skip connections solving the vanishing gradient problem. ResNet is the prime example.

Verified

Resize Observer

Browser API efficiently watching element size changes. Used for responsive custom components.

Verified

Resource Hint

HTML tags (preload, prefetch, preconnect) instructing browsers to prioritize resource loading.

Verified

Responsive Images

Serving appropriately sized images using srcset and picture element based on screen and resolution.

Verified

Responsive Typography

Optimizing font size, line height, and line length based on screen size using clamp() and viewport units.

Verified

REST

Architectural style for APIs relying on HTTP methods and resource URLs. Simple and ubiquitous.

Verified

Retry with Backoff

Retrying failed requests with exponentially increasing delays. Add jitter to prevent thundering herd.

Verified

Reverse Proxy

Server sitting between client and backend, forwarding requests. Nginx and Caddy are common choices.

Verified

Reverse Proxy Cache

Nginx or Varnish caching API responses to reduce load on backend services.

Verified

RGB

Color model using Red, Green, Blue. The rgba() function adds alpha transparency support.

Verified

RLHF

Training models with human preference feedback. Technique used to align ChatGPT and Claude.

Verified

RLHF Fine-tuning

Fine-tuning using human feedback as reinforcement signal. Applied in ChatGPT and Claude development.

Verified

RNN

Recurrent Neural Network designed for sequential data. The predecessor to LSTM.

Verified

Rolling Update

Deployment method replacing servers one by one with a new version without stopping the service.

Verified

Route Guard

Middleware checking auth state before navigation, redirecting unauthorized access.

Verified

Route-Based Code Splitting

Splitting JS into per-route chunks so only the code needed for each page is loaded.

Verified

RPC

Remote Procedure Call. Invoking functions in another process over the network. gRPC uses Protobuf.

Verified

Runtime Type Checking

Validating type correctness at runtime since TypeScript types are erased at compile time. Zod is common.

Verified

Race Condition

Condition where the output of a process depends on the uncontrollable sequence of other events.

Verified

Radial Gradient

Pattern of color transitions that radiates from a central point outward in a circular shape.

Verified

RAM Latency

Delay that occurs between a memory component being asked for data and that data being available.

Verified

Raw Data Cleaning

Process of preparing data for analysis by removing or modifying data that is incorrect or incomplete.

Verified

RBAC (Role-Based Access Control)

Method of regulating access to computer or network resources based on the roles of individual users.

Verified

RDBMS

Database management system based on the relational model, using tables and SQL.

Verified

Reactive Programming

Programming paradigm concerned with data streams and the propagation of change.

Verified

RTB

Automated process of buying and selling digital advertising inventory in real-time.

Verified

Recurring Task

Task that repeats on a regular schedule, such as daily or weekly.

Verified

Recursive Function

Function that calls itself directly or indirectly to solve a problem by breaking it down into smaller instances.

Verified

Regression Testing

Verification that recent code changes have not adversely affected existing functional behavior.

Verified

Relational Algebra

Theoretical language for describing relational database operations using set theory.

Verified

Relay Topology

Network configuration where data is transmitted from one node to another in a chain-like fashion.

Verified

RPC (Remote Procedure Call)

Communication protocol that allows a program to execute a subroutine in another address space.

Verified

Render-blocking Resource

Script or stylesheet that must be processed before the browser can render a page.

Verified

Replication Lag

The time delay between a transaction happening on a primary database and appearing on a replica.

Verified

Request Smuggling

Vulnerability that occurs when different entities interpret an HTTP request in conflicting ways.

Verified

Resilient Design

Architecture that ensures a system continues to function despite failures in its components.

Verified

Resource Contention

Conflict over shared access to a resource, leading to decreased system performance.

Verified

Responsive Breakpoint

Specific screen width defined in CSS to change a website's layout for different devices.

Verified

Richardson Maturity Model

Model that breaks down the principal elements of a REST approach into four levels.

Verified

Ring Buffer

Circular data structure that wraps around to the beginning when it reaches the end.

Verified

Risk Assessment

Process of identifying and evaluating potential threats to a system or project.

Verified

Rooted Device

Android device that has been modified to give the user root access over the system.

Verified

Round Robin

Task scheduling algorithm that distributes requests across a set of resources in a circular order.

Verified

RSA Encryption

Asymmetric cryptographic algorithm based on the difficulty of factoring very large prime numbers.

Verified

Runtime Exception

Programming error that occurs while the code is running, rather than during compilation.

Verified

S Group

Safe Area

Display region avoiding phone notches and home indicators. Controlled with CSS env() values.

Verified

Saga Pattern

Pattern managing distributed transactions across microservices. Uses compensating transactions on failure.

Verified

SAML

XML-based standard for enterprise SSO federation. Common in large organizations.

Verified

Sanitization

Removing or neutralizing dangerous content from user input. Used with escaping to prevent XSS and injection.

Verified

Sass / SCSS

CSS preprocessor adding variables, nesting, mixins, and inheritance. Written in .scss files.

Verified

SAST

Static Application Security Testing. Analyzes source code for vulnerabilities without executing it.

Verified

SBOM

Software Bill of Materials. Inventory of all components and dependencies. Used for vulnerability tracking.

Verified

Schema Validation

Runtime data shape validation with Zod or Yup. Used for forms and API request/response validation.

Verified

Scoped CSS

CSS applied only within a component's scope in Vue SFCs. Eliminates class name collisions.

Verified

Scroll Restoration

Restoring scroll position on browser back/forward navigation. May require manual implementation in SPAs.

Verified

Scrollytelling

Storytelling technique revealing content and animations as the user scrolls. Common in data journalism.

Verified

Secrets Manager

Service for securely storing and distributing secrets like API keys. AWS Secrets Manager is a prime example.

Verified

Secure Coding

Principles and practices for writing code that avoids vulnerabilities like injection and buffer overflow.

Verified

Security Audit

Systematic review of code and config from a security perspective, combining tools and manual review.

Verified

Security Headers

HTTP response headers like HSTS, X-Content-Type-Options, and Referrer-Policy hardening security.

Verified

SecurityHeaders.com

Tool grading HTTP security header configuration from A to F. Useful for assessing hardening completeness.

Verified

Semantic HTML

Using meaningful tags like header, nav, main, and article. Improves SEO and accessibility.

Verified

Semantic Release

Tool automating version bumping, CHANGELOG generation, and package publishing by analyzing commit messages.

Verified

Semantic Similarity

Quantifying the semantic closeness of two texts using cosine similarity of their embedding vectors.

Verified

SemVer

Semantic Versioning format (Major.Minor.Patch) to communicate the nature of changes in releases.

Verified

Sentry

Error monitoring platform capturing, analyzing, and alerting on JavaScript errors in production in real time.

Verified

SEO

Search Engine Optimization. Strategies to improve ranking in search engines.

Verified

Server Component

React component executing only on the server. Safely accesses DBs and secrets without exposing them to clients.

Verified

Server-Sent Events

Simple HTTP-based API for one-way real-time push from server to client.

Verified

Serverless

Cloud architecture where the provider manages server ops, and you only pay for compute time.

Verified

Serverless Function

Cloud function executing code event-driven without managing containers or servers. AWS Lambda is the prime example.

Verified

Service Account

Non-human IAM account allowing applications and services to authenticate with cloud APIs.

Verified

Service Discovery

Mechanism for microservices to automatically locate each other. Consul and K8s DNS are common solutions.

Verified

Service Mesh

Infrastructure layer managing inter-service communication, security, and observability. Istio is the prime example.

Verified

Service Worker

Background browser script enabling caching strategies, push notifications, and offline PWAs.

Verified

sessionStorage

Web Storage API retaining data only for the current browser tab session. Cleared on tab close.

Verified

SHA-256

Hash function generating a 256-bit output. Used for integrity, secure hashing, and blockchain.

Verified

Shadow DOM

Part of Web Components that encapsulates a component's DOM and CSS from the outside world.

Verified

Shard Key

Column determining which shard stores a record. Poor choice causes hot spots and uneven load distribution.

Verified

Shared Nothing Architecture

Architecture where each server has independent memory and storage, ideal for horizontal scaling.

Verified

Sidecar Pattern

Pattern placing a helper container alongside the main one in the same Pod. Common in service meshes.

Verified

SIEM

Security platform aggregating logs and events for real-time threat detection and analysis.

Verified

Signals

Reactive values that notify subscribers when they change. Used in Angular, Vue Refs, and SolidJS for reactivity.

Verified

Single File Component

Component format bundling template, script, and style in one file. Popularized by Vue's SFC format.

Verified

Skeleton Screen

UI pattern showing grey placeholder shapes during loading. Considered better UX than spinners.

Verified

SLA

Service Level Agreement. Contract defining quality guarantees like uptime and response time.

Verified

SLO

Service Level Objective. Internal reliability target. Used with error budgets in SRE practices.

Verified

Slot

Vue/Web Components mechanism for parent to inject HTML content into a child. Equivalent to React children.

Verified

SLSA

Framework defining security maturity levels for software supply chains.

Verified

SMTP

Email sending protocol. Backend email is often delegated to services like SendGrid or Postmark.

Verified

Snowflake

Cloud-native data warehouse with a unique architecture separating storage and compute.

Verified

Socket.io

Node.js library simplifying real-time bidirectional communication with WebSocket fallback support.

Verified

SolidJS

Ultra-fast UI library updating the real DOM directly with reactive primitives, no virtual DOM.

Verified

Source Map

File mapping minified production code back to original source. Essential for debugging production errors.

Verified

SPA

Single Page Application. Rewrites the page dynamically with JS avoiding full reloads.

Verified

SPF

Email auth publishing authorized sending IPs in DNS. Prevents email spoofing.

Verified

Splash Screen

Initial screen showing logo/branding during app startup. Masks load time and reinforces brand.

Verified

SQL

Standard language for querying and manipulating relational databases.

Verified

SQL Injection

Attack injecting SQL into user input to manipulate the DB. Prevented with prepared statements.

Verified

SQL Window Function

SQL functions computing aggregates or rankings over partitions using OVER(). ROW_NUMBER and RANK are examples.

Verified

SSG

Static Site Generation. Generates HTML at build time for extreme performance via CDNs.

Verified

SSH

Secure Shell. Protocol for safely operating remote servers over an encrypted network connection.

Verified

SSL Pinning

Mobile app technique trusting only a specific TLS certificate. Strengthens resistance to MITM attacks.

Verified

SSL/TLS

Protocol that encrypts network communication. The 'S' in HTTPS.

Verified

SSO

Single Sign-On. Allows users to authenticate once and access multiple independent systems.

Verified

SSO with SAML

Enterprise SSO using SAML assertions exchanged between Identity Provider and Service Provider.

Verified

SSR

Server-Side Rendering. Generates HTML on the server per request. Great for SEO and fresh data.

Verified

SSR Streaming

React 18 technique streaming HTML chunks from server using Suspense. Improves TTFB.

Verified

Stable Diffusion

Open-source image generation diffusion model by Stability AI. Generates high-quality images from text locally.

Verified

Stale-While-Revalidate

Cache strategy serving stale data immediately while revalidating in the background. Balances UX and freshness.

Verified

State Machine

Defining finite states and transitions to manage complex UI state clearly. XState is the prime library.

Verified

Stateless Architecture

Design where servers hold no session state. Any instance can handle any request identically.

Verified

Sticky Element

UI element remaining fixed on screen while scrolling. Implemented with position: sticky. Used for nav and CTAs.

Verified

Stored XSS

XSS variant persisting malicious scripts in the DB, executing them in other users' browsers on page load.

Verified

Storybook

Tool for developing, documenting, and testing UI components in isolation. Essential for design systems.

Verified

strace

Linux tool tracing system calls of a process in real time. Used for debugging and performance investigation.

Verified

Structured Output

Constraining LLM output to a specific schema like JSON for reliable application integration.

Verified

Style Guide

Document defining colors, fonts, and component usage for a website. Part of a larger design system.

Verified

Subdomain Takeover

Vulnerability where DNS records pointing to deleted cloud resources allow attackers to take control.

Verified

Supabase

Open-source Firebase alternative built on PostgreSQL with realtime, auth, storage, and Edge Functions.

Verified

Supply Chain Attack

Attack injecting malicious code into trusted software dependencies or build pipelines.

Verified

SUS

System Usability Scale. Standardized 10-question survey quantifying system usability into a score.

Verified

Suspense

React mechanism declaratively showing fallback UI while async data loads. Also used for code splitting.

Verified

Svelte

UI framework that compiles away at build time. No virtual DOM, resulting in tiny, fast bundles.

Verified

SvelteKit

Svelte-based full-stack framework offering SSR, SSG, and serverless with simple configuration.

Verified

Swipe Card UI

Mobile UI pattern swiping cards left or right to approve or reject. Famous from Tinder's interface.

Verified

Swipe Gesture

UI interaction responding to finger swipes on touch devices. Used for navigation, deletion, and carousels.

Verified

SWR

Vercel's data fetching library implementing Stale-While-Revalidate strategy for auto caching and revalidation.

Verified

Symbol (JS)

JavaScript primitive creating globally unique values. Used for non-enumerable object keys and identifiers.

Verified

System Prompt

Special input defining the LLM's behavior, role, and constraints at the start of a conversation.

Verified

Skeleton Screen

UX pattern showing a placeholder layout while content is loading, reducing perceived latency.

Verified

SVG

Scalable Vector Graphics. XML-based image format that scales without losing quality. Perfect for web icons.

Verified

Sandbox

Isolated environment where software can be executed without affecting the rest of the system.

Verified

Scale-up (Vertical)

Increasing the capacity of a single machine by adding more CPU, RAM, or storage.

Verified

Scale-out (Horizontal)

Adding more machines to a system's pool of resources to handle increased load.

Verified

Schema Registry

Central repository for managing and sharing schemas between data producers and consumers.

Verified

SDK (Software Development Kit)

Set of tools, libraries, and documentation that help developers build apps for specific systems.

Verified

Search Intent

The underlying goal or reason why a user performs a specific search engine query.

Verified

Secondary Index

Index created on a set of fields other than the primary key to improve search efficiency.

Verified

Secure Boot

Security standard that prevents malicious software from loading when your PC starts up.

Verified

Sensing (AI)

Use of AI to interpret and react to data from sensors or environmental inputs.

Verified

Sentinel Value

Special value in a data structure that marks the end of a series or a specific condition.

Verified

Separation of Concerns

Design principle for separating a computer program into distinct sections based on their function.

Verified

Serialization

Process of converting an object into a format that can be stored or transmitted.

Verified

Serverless (FaaS)

Cloud computing model where the provider manages the server infrastructure and scales code on demand.

Verified

Service Mesh

Dedicated infrastructure layer for managing service-to-service communication in microservices.

Verified

Service Worker

Scripts that run in the background of a browser, enabling features like offline support and push notifications.

Verified

Session Fixation

Vulnerability that allows an attacker to hijack a valid user session by fixing the session ID.

Verified

Shader

Type of computer program used to calculate rendering effects on graphics hardware.

Verified

Shadow DOM

Web standard that allows for encapsulation of CSS and HTML within a component.

Verified

Sharding

Database architecture pattern that partitions data horizontally across multiple instances.

Verified

Shotgun Surgery

Code smell where a single change requires making many small edits to multiple classes.

Verified

Sidecar Pattern

Design pattern where an auxiliary container is attached to a primary application to extend its functionality.

Verified

Side Effect

Modification of some state outside of a function, in addition to returning a value.

Verified

Signal-to-Noise Ratio

Measure that compares the level of a desired signal to the level of background noise.

Verified

Signature-based Detection

Method used in antivirus software to identify malware by comparing files against a database of known patterns.

Verified

Single Source of Truth (SSoT)

Practice of structuring information models such that every data element is mastered in only one place.

Verified

Sinkhole

DNS redirection technique used to intercept and analyze malicious traffic.

Verified

Skeuomorphism

Design style where items represented resemble their real-world counterparts.

Verified

SLM (Small Language Model)

AI models with fewer parameters than LLMs, optimized for specific tasks or edge devices.

Verified

SNMP

Internet-standard protocol for collecting and organizing information about managed devices on IP networks.

Verified

Soft Delete

Operation that marks a record as deleted without actually removing it from the database.

Verified

Software Supply Chain

Anything that goes into or affects your code from development to production.

Verified

SOLID Principles

Five design principles intended to make software designs more understandable and flexible.

Verified

Source Map

File that maps transformed source code back to the original source to aid debugging.

Verified

Spaghetti Code

Unstructured and difficult-to-maintain computer code, named for its tangled flow.

Verified

Sparse Matrix

Matrix in which most of the elements are zero, requiring specialized storage formats.

Verified

Static Analysis

Automated analysis of source code without executing the program.

Verified

Sticky Session

Feature in load balancing that routes subsequent requests from a client to the same backend server.

Verified

Stop Word

Commonly used words that are filtered out before or after processing of natural language data.

Verified

Storage Class

Different tiers of data availability and cost for cloud object storage services.

Verified

Stream Processing

Computer programming paradigm that treats data as a continuous flow of events.

Verified

Stride (CNN)

Parameter in CNNs that determines the step size for moving a filter across an image.

Verified

Structural Integrity

The certainty that data is accurate, consistent, and follows defined storage rules.

Verified

Syntactic Sugar

Syntax within a programming language that is designed to make things easier to read or to express.

Verified

T Group

Tag Manager

Tool like Google Tag Manager managing and deploying tracking scripts without code changes.

Verified

Tailwind CSS

Utility-first CSS framework. Build styles by composing small utility classes directly in HTML.

Verified

Taint & Toleration

Kubernetes mechanism adding constraints (Taint) to nodes, scheduling only Pods with matching Toleration.

Verified

TanStack Query

Library for declarative server state fetching, caching, and sync in React. Formerly React Query.

Verified

TanStack Table

Headless, framework-agnostic table library with declarative sorting, filtering, and pagination.

Verified

Task Analysis

Analyzing the steps, decisions, and actions required to complete a task. Used to optimize UI flows.

Verified

Task Flow

Specific path a user takes to complete a single task. More granular than a user flow.

Verified

TCP

Reliable, connection-based transport protocol. The foundation of HTTP/1.1.

Verified

TCP/IP Stack

Protocol suite powering internet communication. Four layers: Application, Transport, Internet, and Link.

Verified

TDD

Test-Driven Development. Writing failing tests first, then writing code to make them pass.

Verified

Telemetry

Collecting and analyzing app performance, errors, and usage data. APM tools leverage telemetry.

Verified

Temperature

Parameter controlling LLM output randomness. Near 0 is deterministic; above 1 is more creative.

Verified

Temporal

Workflow orchestration engine for running complex, long-running business logic with fault tolerance.

Verified

Terraform

HashiCorp IaC tool. Declaratively defines AWS, GCP, and Azure infrastructure using HCL.

Verified

Test Spec File

Naming convention for test files (.spec.ts or .test.ts) automatically discovered by test runners.

Verified

Testing Library

Library family for testing components from the user's perspective, focusing on behavior over implementation.

Verified

text-overflow

CSS property truncating overflowing text with an ellipsis. Used with overflow:hidden and white-space:nowrap.

Verified

Think-Aloud Protocol

Usability technique where users verbalize thoughts while interacting with a UI. Highly effective for finding issues.

Verified

Three Pillars of Observability

Logs, Metrics, and Traces — the three pillars providing full observability into system behavior.

Verified

Throttle

Limiting a function to execute at most once per time interval. Used for scroll or resize events.

Verified

Timezone Handling

Best practice storing dates in UTC and converting to local time on the frontend with Intl.DateTimeFormat or dayjs.

Verified

Timing Attack

Side-channel attack inferring secrets from processing time differences. Mitigated with constant-time comparison.

Verified

TLS Handshake

Key exchange and authentication process before encrypted communication starts. The start of every HTTPS connection.

Verified

Toast Notification

Temporary notification appearing at screen edge and auto-dismissing. Unobtrusive feedback.

Verified

Token

String used for auth. Typically sent as a Bearer token in headers.

Verified

Token (LLM)

Minimal text unit processed by LLMs, roughly a word or subword. Cost is calculated per token.

Verified

Token Rotation

Issuing a new refresh token on each use to detect and prevent reuse of leaked tokens.

Verified

Tokenizer

Tool splitting text into tokens for LLM processing. BPE and SentencePiece are widely used algorithms.

Verified

Tooltip

Explanatory text appearing on hover. Combine with aria-label for full accessibility support.

Verified

TOTP

Time-based One-Time Password. Generates a 6-digit code every 30 seconds seeded from the current time.

Verified

Touch Target

Minimum tappable size on mobile (Google recommends 48x48dp). Undersized targets increase user errors.

Verified

Transaction Isolation Level

Levels defining how isolated DB transactions are from each other. Ranges from READ COMMITTED to SERIALIZABLE.

Verified

Transfer Learning

Transferring knowledge from a pre-trained model to a new task. Achieves high accuracy with limited data.

Verified

Transformer

Deep learning architecture built on attention. Foundation of GPT, BERT, and most modern AI models.

Verified

Transpile

Translating code from one language version to another (e.g., TS to JS) so browsers can run it.

Verified

Tree Shaking

Build optimization removing unused code from bundles. Works effectively with ES module libraries.

Verified

Trie

Tree data structure sharing string prefixes. Used for autocomplete search and routing implementations.

Verified

tRPC

Framework for building type-safe APIs using only TypeScript, sharing types between client and server.

Verified

TTI

Time to Interactive. Time until the page is fully interactive. Long JS blocking worsens TTI.

Verified

TTL

Time to Live. Seconds a cache or DNS record stays valid. Too short increases load; too long stales data.

Verified

TTS (Time to Second)

Family of Web Vitals metrics (TTFB, FCP, TTI, LCP) measuring how quickly a page becomes usable.

Verified

Turbopack

Rust-based next-gen bundler for Next.js by Vercel. Provides ultra-fast HMR as Webpack's successor.

Verified

Turborepo

Build system by Vercel optimizing parallel task execution and caching for monorepos.

Verified

Type Assertion

TypeScript as syntax forcing the type checker to accept a specific type. Overuse undermines type safety.

Verified

Type Hierarchy

Typographic design distinguishing headings, subheadings, body, and captions to communicate content importance.

Verified

Type Narrowing

TypeScript technique narrowing types with if statements, typeof guards, and type guard functions.

Verified

Type Scale

Systematic ratios for text sizes across headings, body, and captions. Often uses 1.25 or 1.618.

Verified

TypeScript

JavaScript with static typing. Catches errors before runtime, essential for large teams.

Verified

Technical Debt

Implied cost of additional rework caused by choosing an easy solution now instead of a better approach.

Verified

Telemetry

Automated communications process by which measurements are collected at remote points.

Verified

Tensor

Mathematical object represented as an array of components that are functions of the coordinates of a space.

Verified

TDD (Test Driven Development)

Software development process relying on very short development cycles for each new feature.

Verified

Throttle

Process used to regulate the rate at which an action is performed, such as event listeners.

Verified

Token Bucket

Algorithm used to control the amount of data that is injected into a network.

Verified

Traceability

The degree to which a relationship can be established between two or more products of the development process.

Verified

Transformation (AI)

Process of altering data in structure, format, or value for processing by AI models.

Verified

Transpilation

Type of source-to-source compilation that translates code from one language to another.

Verified

TEE (Trusted Execution Environment)

Secure area of a main processor that ensures sensitive data is stored, processed, and protected.

Verified

U Group

UDP

Fast, connectionless protocol without delivery guarantees. Used for video streaming and DNS queries.

Verified

UI Component Library

Library providing reusable UI components like buttons, inputs, and modals. MUI, shadcn/ui, and Ant Design are examples.

Verified

UI Design Pattern

Reusable UI solution templates for recurring design problems. Covers navigation, forms, and data display.

Verified

Uncontrolled Component

React approach managing form values via ref and DOM directly instead of state. Suits simple forms.

Verified

Unit Test

Smallest test scope verifying individual functions or modules in isolation. Often written with Jest or Vitest.

Verified

Unix Timestamp

Seconds since Jan 1 1970. Timezone-agnostic format excellent for system interoperability.

Verified

Unvalidated Redirect

Implementation flaw using user-supplied URLs as redirect destinations. Listed in OWASP Top 10.

Verified

Upstash

Serverless Redis and Kafka over HTTP. Well-suited for caching in edge environments.

Verified

URL Encode

Converting characters to %XX format for URLs so they don't break network protocols.

Verified

URL State Management

Storing UI state like filters and pagination in URL query params so state is restored when sharing URLs.

Verified

Usability Testing

Core UX research method observing real users completing tasks to identify problems.

Verified

useCallback

React hook memoizing a function to prevent unnecessary child re-renders. Dependency array management is key.

Verified

useEffect

React hook handling side effects like API calls and subscriptions on mount and state changes.

Verified

useMemo

React hook caching expensive computation results. Recomputes only when dependencies change.

Verified

User Flow

Diagram mapping a user's step-by-step journey through an app toward a goal.

Verified

useRef

React hook holding a mutable value without triggering re-renders, also used to reference DOM elements.

Verified

useState

React's fundamental hook for adding state to functional components.

Verified

UTC

Coordinated Universal Time. The base timezone. Servers and databases should always store times in UTC.

Verified

UUID

128-bit Universally Unique Identifier. Can be generated randomly with extremely low collision risk.

Verified

UX Audit

Systematic evaluation of an existing product to identify improvements in usability, accessibility, and KPIs.

Verified

UX Research

Qualitative and quantitative studies understanding user behavior, needs, and motivations. Includes interviews and surveys.

Verified

UX Writing

Crafting UI text (buttons, errors, empty states) that guides users and communicates clearly.

Verified

U-turn (Back Button)

Navigating back to the previous page or state in a web application.

Verified

Unidirectional Data Flow

Data modeling pattern where the updates only travel in a single direction.

Verified

Universal Design

Design of products and environments to be usable by all people, to the greatest extent possible.

Verified

Unpushed Commits

Commits that exist in a local repository but have not yet been uploaded to a remote server.

Verified

Upstream

Original repository from which a project was forked or the source of component dependencies.

Verified

V Group

Value Proposition

Clear statement of unique value a product delivers. The foundation for UI and copywriting decisions.

Verified

Vector Database

Database for fast similarity search of high-dimensional embedding vectors. Pinecone and Qdrant are examples.

Verified

Viewport Meta Tag

<meta name='viewport'> tag telling mobile browsers to use the device width. Required for responsive design.

Verified

Virtual DOM

Lightweight JS representation of the real DOM. React diffs it to apply minimal actual DOM updates.

Verified

Visual Feedback

UI communicating action results: button highlights, loading indicators, and success/error messages.

Verified

Visual Hierarchy

Using size, color, contrast, and placement to communicate information importance and guide attention.

Verified

Visual Regression Testing

Comparing UI screenshots to detect unintended visual changes. Percy and Chromatic are popular tools.

Verified

ViT

Vision Transformer applying the Transformer architecture to images by treating patches as sequences.

Verified

Vite

Ultra-fast dev server and build tool based on native ES modules. Popular successor to CRA and Vue CLI.

Verified

Vitest

Fast unit test framework built on Vite with Jest-compatible API.

Verified

VPC

Virtual Private Cloud. Logically isolated network in the cloud with subnets, routing, and security groups.

Verified

Vue.js

Progressive JavaScript framework known for gentle learning curve. Popular for small to medium projects.

Verified

W Group

WAL

Write-Ahead Log. Records changes before writing to DB files for crash recovery and replication.

Verified

Wayfinding

Navigation design helping users know where they are and how to reach their destination without getting lost.

Verified

WCAG

Web Content Accessibility Guidelines. International standard for making web content accessible.

Verified

Web Components

Browser-native component model consisting of Custom Elements, Shadow DOM, and HTML Templates.

Verified

Web Worker

API running JavaScript in a background thread separate from the main thread to prevent UI blocking.

Verified

WebAssembly

Binary format enabling code written in C++, Rust, etc. to run at near-native speed in browsers.

Verified

WebGL

JavaScript API for GPU-accelerated 3D graphics in browsers based on OpenGL ES. Foundation for Three.js.

Verified

Webhook

Mechanism where an app sends an automated HTTP request to another app when an event occurs.

Verified

Webhook Security

Verifying webhook payloads with HMAC-SHA256 signatures to confirm they come from the legitimate sender.

Verified

WebP

Modern image format by Google. Smaller than JPEG/PNG, supports transparency, greatly improves performance.

Verified

WebSocket

Protocol establishing full-duplex channels between browser and server. Used for chat and real-time apps.

Verified

WebSocket Protocol

Full-duplex protocol established by upgrading an HTTP connection. Uses ws:// or wss:// URL scheme.

Verified

Whisper

OpenAI's open-source automatic speech recognition model. Supports multiple languages with high accuracy.

Verified

Wireframe

Low-fidelity blueprint communicating page structure and layout without visual styling.

Verified

Worker Threads

Node.js module running CPU-intensive tasks in parallel threads separate from the main thread.

Verified

Web Vitals

Essential metrics (LCP, CLS, INP, etc.) defined by Google to measure the quality of user experience on the web.

Verified

Web Scraping Ethics

Principles and legal considerations to follow when programmatically extracting data from websites.

Verified

X Group

XSS

Cross-Site Scripting. Major vulnerability injecting scripts into web pages. Prevented by escaping.

Verified

XState

JavaScript state machine and statechart library. Visualizes and manages complex UI state.

Verified

Y Group

YAML

Human-readable data format using indentation. Heavily used in config files like Docker Compose.

Verified

Z Group

Z-Pattern

Eye movement pattern reading a page in a Z-shape. Appears on banners and pages with sparse content.

Verified

Zero Trust

Security model trusting nothing by default, continuously verifying every access attempt.

Verified

Zero-Day

Unknown vulnerability that has no patch yet, or an attack exploiting such a vulnerability.

Verified

Zero-Shot Learning

LLM capability performing unseen tasks from prompt alone without any additional training.

Verified

Zod

TypeScript-first schema declaration and validation library providing both type inference and runtime validation.

Verified

Zustand

Lightweight React state management library with a simple API. Gaining popularity over Redux.

Verified

Other Other Terms

.env

File for environment variables. Stores secrets like API keys. Never commit this to Git.

Verified