Category: Formats & Standards

What is ASCII? Learn how this 7-bit encoding maps 128 characters, the control vs printable ranges, its link to UTF-8, and why extended ASCII is a misnomer.

What is semantic versioning? Learn how SemVer’s MAJOR.MINOR.PATCH scheme signals breaking changes, features, and fixes, plus pre-release tags and ranges.

What is a JSON Schema? Learn how this vocabulary validates and documents JSON with type, properties, required, and $ref, plus drafts and common pitfalls.

What is NDJSON? Learn how newline-delimited JSON streams records one per line, how it differs from a JSON array, its media type, and how to parse it safely.

What is a byte order mark? Learn what the BOM is, its byte signatures in UTF-8/UTF-16/UTF-32, why it breaks JSON and PHP, and how to detect and remove it.

What is a MIME type? A clear developer guide to media types, the Content-Type header, charset, +json suffixes, MIME sniffing, and common pitfalls.

A fair comparison of XML and JSON: their data models, verbosity, schemas, and the real situations where each is the better choice.

What a UUID is, how its 128 bits are laid out into the 8-4-4-4-12 form, what the version and variant fields mean, and where UUIDs fit best.

Unicode assigns every character a code point; UTF-8 encodes those code points as bytes. How the two layers fit together, with a worked encoding example.

A practical style guide for readable SQL: keyword casing, indentation, where to break lines, comma placement, alias rules, and join clarity that hold up in review.