English for Developers

Practice the English you need at work.

Prepare for standups, interviews, code reviews, and architecture discussions with feedback tuned for engineering communication.

AI Chat Practice

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Vocabulary Review

Review core phrases, latest AI suggestions, and words from your practice history.

29 phrases

Top vocabulary is a stable starter set for debugging, code review, meetings, incidents, architecture, and interviews.

Debugging

root cause

The real underlying reason a problem happened.

The root cause was a missing validation check in the payment flow.

Core phrase

Debugging

reproduce the issue

Make the problem happen again so it can be investigated.

I can reproduce the issue when the request payload is empty.

Core phrase

Debugging

edge case

An unusual input or condition that can break normal behavior.

This edge case happens when the user has no saved preferences.

Core phrase

Debugging

regression

A bug where something that worked before stops working.

The latest release introduced a regression in the login flow.

Core phrase

Debugging

workaround

A temporary way to avoid a problem before the real fix is ready.

As a workaround, we can retry the request after refreshing the token.

Core phrase

Meetings

blocker

Something that prevents progress.

The missing API contract is currently a blocker for frontend integration.

Core phrase

Meetings

follow up

Continue or check something after the current discussion.

I will follow up with the backend team after standup.

Core phrase

Meetings

align on

Agree on the same direction or decision.

We need to align on the rollout plan before merging this change.

Core phrase

Meetings

scope creep

When a task keeps growing beyond the original plan.

This ticket has some scope creep, so I split the extra work into a new task.

Core phrase

Architecture

trade-off

A decision where you gain one benefit but accept another cost.

The trade-off is faster delivery but less flexibility later.

Core phrase

Architecture

single point of failure

One component that can break the whole system if it fails.

The cache server is a single point of failure in the current design.

Core phrase

Architecture

event-driven

A design where services react to events instead of direct calls.

An event-driven approach would reduce coupling between services.

Core phrase

Architecture

backward compatible

Still works with older clients or previous versions.

This API change is backward compatible because the old field still works.

Core phrase

Architecture

bottleneck

The slowest part that limits overall performance.

Database writes are the main bottleneck during peak traffic.

Core phrase

Code Review

nitpick

A small non-blocking review comment.

Nitpick: we could rename this variable to make it clearer.

Core phrase

Code Review

non-blocking

Useful feedback that should not stop the change from merging.

This is non-blocking, but the helper name could be more specific.

Core phrase

Code Review

looks good to me

A common approval phrase in code review.

Looks good to me after the test update.

Core phrase

Code Review

address feedback

Make changes based on review comments.

I addressed the feedback and pushed a smaller commit.

Core phrase

Code Review

test coverage

How much behavior is checked by tests.

I added test coverage for the expired-token case.

Core phrase

Incident

incident

A production problem that affects users or service health.

We opened an incident after the API error rate increased.

Core phrase

Incident

mitigation

An action that reduces impact before the full fix is done.

The mitigation was to disable the new cache path temporarily.

Core phrase

Incident

rollback

Revert to a previous version.

We decided to rollback the release after seeing database timeouts.

Core phrase

Incident

postmortem

A review after an incident to learn what happened.

The postmortem identified weak monitoring around queue latency.

Core phrase

Incident

blast radius

How much of the system or user base is affected by a failure.

Feature flags helped reduce the blast radius of the deployment.

Core phrase

Interview

clarify assumptions

Explain what you believe is true before solving a problem.

I would clarify assumptions about traffic volume before choosing a database.

Core phrase

Interview

walk through

Explain step by step.

Let me walk through how I would debug this issue.

Core phrase

Interview

scale horizontally

Add more machines or instances instead of making one machine bigger.

We can scale horizontally by adding more API replicas behind the load balancer.

Core phrase

Interview

failure mode

A way a system can fail.

One failure mode is that the queue grows faster than workers can process it.

Core phrase

Interview

justify the decision

Explain why a choice is reasonable.

I would justify the decision by comparing complexity, cost, and reliability.

Core phrase

Session history

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