Frontend
These 2 technologies give websites structure and style (in that order).
What are HTML and CSS?
When you log in to Instagram, this part of the application checks your credentials and handles requests behind the scenes.
What is the backend (or a server)?
This language lets you query, insert, update, and delete data in relational databases.
What is SQL?
ChatGPT, Gemini, and Claude belong to this category of AI models that can generate human-like text.
What are large language models (LLMs)?
Logging in requires both your password and a code from an authenticator app. This security measure adds a second verification factor.
What is multi-factor authentication (MFA)?
In React, this special function lets a component remember information like whether the dark mode toggle is on.
What is useState?
What is the HTTP method used to retrieve data?
What is GET?
In a relational database, this field uniquely identifies each row in a table, like a student ID identifying one student.
What is a primary key?
A model learns from labeled examples of spam and non-spam emails to classify future emails. This type of machine learning uses known answers during training.
What is supervised learning?
A website stores your password using a one-way transformation designed for password storage, rather than keeping the original password. This security technique helps protect passwords if the database leaks.
What is password hashing?
Your website looks perfect on your laptop but completely falls apart on your phone. This design approach helps it adapt to different screen sizes.
What is responsive design?
An API returns 404 when you request a page or resource that it cannot find. This other HTTP status code means the request succeeded.
What is 200 OK?
A database query is painfully slow because it has to scan millions of rows. This structure can help it locate matching records much faster.
What is a database index?
An AI model gets 99% accuracy on its training data but performs terribly on new data. It has memorized the training examples instead of learning patterns that generalize. What happened?
What is overfitting?
You receive an email claiming your university account will be deleted unless you click a suspicious link and enter your password. This type of attack is trying to trick you into revealing sensitive information.
What is phishing?
A user clicks “Like,” and the number updates instantly without reloading the entire page. This technique makes the interface feel fast by updating the UI before waiting for the server.
What is an optimistic UI update?
Your app repeatedly fetches the same popular profile from the database. You store a temporary copy in a faster storage layer to reduce repeated database work. What is this called?
What is caching?
You run a query to find every student whose GPA is above 3.5, but your database returns duplicate student records because of a JOIN. Which SQL keyword can remove duplicate rows from your results?
What is DISTINCT?
You ask an AI for real research papers, and it confidently invents a convincing title and fake authors. This AI failure is commonly called what?
What is a hallucination?
You download a seemingly harmless game, but it secretly installs software that spies on your activity and steals your information. What type of malicious software is this?
What is spyware?
Your React component keeps re-rendering because an effect updates state, which triggers the effect again. This common bug can cause an endless cycle.
What is an infinite render loop (or infinite useEffect loop)?
Your app suddenly gets 10,000 requests per second. Instead of making every request wait on one server, this technique distributes traffic across multiple servers.
What is load balancing?
Imagine two students try to register for the last available spot in a popular CS class at the exact same time. This database property ensures that transactions behave reliably, even when multiple operations happen simultaneously, so the database doesn't end up in an inconsistent state.
What is ACID (or transaction consistency)?
An LLM is asked to answer questions using documents retrieved from a knowledge base instead of relying only on information encoded in its parameters. This technique can help ground answers in relevant sources.
What is retrieval-augmented generation (RAG)?
A user changes the ID in a URL from /profile/123 to /profile/124 and can suddenly view someone else's private information. The server failed to enforce what important security check?
What is authorization (object-level access control)?