/CS Theory

B-Trees: More Than I Thought I'd Want To Know

- Ben Congdon tl;dr: Ben's biggest takeaway is that there's "a significant difference between a data structure as an abstract mathematical concept (“a B⁺-Tree”) and concrete implementations (“SQLite’s database format”)." The optimizations to implementations "won’t improve the BigO characteristics of a data structure, but will have significant “real world” implications on performance & usability of a DB."

featured in #247


How The Slowest Computer Programs Illuminate Math’s Fundamental Limits

- John Pavlus tl;dr: "The goal of the “busy beaver” game is to find the longest-running computer program." This is relevant to Turing machines. "The busy beaver game asks: given a certain number of rules, what’s the maximum number of steps that a Turing machine can take before halting?"

featured in #220


Why Databases Use Ordered Indexes But Programming Uses Hash Tables

- Evan Jones tl;dr: Discussion on the lower level differences between hash maps and b-trees, when to use them, and why.

featured in #165