20 Oct 2019

Dev Glossary

• idempotent [idem’potent]: gives the same result when applied multiple times
  • 1 * 1 * 1 = 1
  • add operation on a set (sets store unique values)

set.add('1');
set.add('1');

API’s GET, PUT and DELETE should be idempotent

• ephemeral: temporary

  • RAM
  • a mutable object
  • ephemeral servers like Lambda on AWS
  • IP addresses can be ephemeral

• predicate: a function that returns a boolean

function isPhoneNumber(str) {
    ...
    return true;
    ...
    return false;
}

• memoization: caching the return value of a function

• serialization: converting an object to a more generic format (eg. JSON) so that it can be used somewhere else, eg. JavaScript object → JSON → Python object