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Glossary — I

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IDE (Integrated Development Environment)

A code editor with extra tools built in: syntax highlighting, autocomplete, debugging, version control integration, terminal, project navigation. VS Code is the dominant IDE for web development. JetBrains makes commercial IDEs (WebStorm, PyCharm). Some people prefer minimal editors (Vim, Neovim, Helix) with plugins. They’re all IDEs by another name.

See also: VS Code

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Import

A statement that pulls a function, class, or value from one file into another. In modern JavaScript:

import { useState } from "react";
import { Button } from "@/components/Button";

The string after from is either a package name (resolves to node_modules/) or a path to a file in your project.

See also: ES Modules, Module

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Index (database)

A data structure that makes lookups in a database table much faster, by precomputing where rows are. Without an index, the database has to scan every row to find a match (slow). With an index on a column, it can jump straight to matching rows (fast). The cost: indexes use disk space and slightly slow down writes.

See also: Indexes & performance

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Interface (TypeScript)

A named description of the shape of an object — what properties it has and what types they are.

interface User {
  id: string;
  name: string;
  email: string;
  isAdmin?: boolean; // ? means optional
}

type declarations do almost the same thing; the differences are subtle. Most teams pick one and stick with it.

See also: TypeScript

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IP address

The numeric address of a device on a network. Two flavors: IPv4 (four numbers like 76.76.21.21) and IPv6 (longer hexadecimal addresses). Domain names (DNS) ultimately resolve to IP addresses.

See also: IP addresses

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