Access control is the bouncer at the exclusive nightclub of your codebase, deciding who gets in and what they can do once inside. It's the digital equivalent of a velvet rope, keeping the riffraff out and the VIPs (like your core business logic) safe from prying eyes and meddling hands.

How to use it in a sentence

• "I was going to refactor that legacy code, but the access control was tighter than Elon Musk's Twitter moderation policy."

• "Sure, we could just make everything public, but then we'd have about as much access control as Facebook has over your personal data."

If you actually want to learn more...

• Access Modifiers by Martin Fowler provides a concise overview of how access control works in various object-oriented programming languages like C++, Java, C#, and Smalltalk.

• The Security tag on Martin Fowler's blog offers several articles discussing the importance of security in modern web development, including topics like threat modeling and session secret management that relate to access control.

• For a deep dive into threat modeling as an approach to designing secure systems, check out this guide to threat modeling for developers by Jim Gumbley, which emphasizes focusing on technical threats and taking a collaborative approach to access control and security.

Note: the Developer Dictionary is in Beta. Please direct feedback to skye@statsig.com.