Computer Science

9 posts in this domain.

Why floating-point addition isn't associative Schoolroom math says (a + b) + c equals a + (b + c). On a real computer it doesn't, and that one fact ripples out into nondeterministic GPU reductions, irreproducible training runs, and LLM outputs that aren't bit-stable across hardware. May 2, 2026 · intermediate
What is a hash function? A deterministic shrinker that turns any blob of bytes into a fixed-size fingerprint — the same primitive that powers hash tables, Git commits, and password storage. Apr 30, 2026 · intro
Why bf16 won the training format wars Half-precision floats came in two flavors: fp16, which had been around for years, and bf16, which kept fp32's exponent and threw away mantissa bits. The less-precise format won. Here's why that's not a typo. Apr 29, 2026 · intermediate
Why Git stores snapshots, not diffs Git's reputation says 'version control = diffs.' Git's actual model says 'version control = snapshots, hashed.' That swap is the whole reason Git feels different. Apr 29, 2026 · intro
Why networks are big-endian but your CPU is little-endian Two halves of the same machine disagree on which end of a number comes first. The split is older than you, and it's never going away. Apr 29, 2026 · intermediate
What is a hash table? A data structure that lets you find, insert, and delete by key in roughly constant time — the workhorse behind dictionaries, sets, and most fast lookup in modern code. Apr 29, 2026 · intro
Why UTF-8 won Unicode could have been a fixed 4-byte-per-character encoding. Instead, the web runs on a variable-width hack — and that hack is why everything still works. Apr 29, 2026 · intro
Why WebAssembly exists JavaScript already runs everywhere. So why did browser vendors agree to ship a second, lower-level execution target — and why is it now showing up in CDNs, plugin systems, and AI runtimes? Apr 29, 2026 · intro
Why JSON beat XML XML had a standards body, schemas, namespaces, transformations, and a decade head start. JSON had curly braces and a JavaScript parser. Curly braces won. Apr 29, 2026 · intro