Data
10 posts in this domain.
- Why B-trees still dominate database indexes Disks read in blocks, not bytes. B-trees were designed around that one fact — and decades later, even on SSDs, no one has dethroned them. Apr 29, 2026 · intermediate
- Why columnar storage won for analytics Row stores read every column to answer a one-column question. Columnar stores refuse — and that refusal is what makes Parquet, ClickHouse, DuckDB, and every modern data warehouse fast. Apr 29, 2026 · intermediate
- Why CRDTs exist Two people typing into the same document at the same time, possibly offline, possibly across the world. The merge has to come out the same on both screens with no central referee. CRDTs are the data structures that make that arithmetic instead of a fight. Apr 29, 2026 · intermediate
- Why Bloom filters exist A data structure that answers "have I seen this?" with "definitely no" or "maybe" — and saves enormous amounts of work by being wrong on purpose. Apr 29, 2026 · intro
- Why 'eventually consistent' became acceptable For decades, anything weaker than strict consistency was a bug. Then the internet got big enough that strict consistency stopped being affordable — and a generation of engineers learned to live with the gap. Apr 29, 2026 · intermediate
- Why Postgres uses MVCC Readers shouldn't have to wait for writers, and writers shouldn't have to wait for readers — so Postgres keeps multiple versions of every row. Apr 29, 2026 · intermediate
- Why Merkle trees are everywhere A hash tree that lets you prove one tiny piece of a giant dataset is correct without re-downloading the whole thing — the trick that quietly underpins Git, Bitcoin, IPFS, and certificate transparency. Apr 29, 2026 · intro
- Why LSM trees exist B-trees write where the key lives. LSM trees refuse to do that — and that refusal is the whole point. Apr 29, 2026 · intermediate
- Why UUIDv7 is quietly replacing autoincrement IDs Autoincrement IDs can't be minted client-side and leak how many rows you have. Random UUIDs trash your index. UUIDv7 is the boring fix almost nobody noticed shipping. Apr 29, 2026 · intermediate
- Write-ahead logging Why databases write your change to a log before they write it to the actual table — and why crash recovery is impossible without it. Apr 29, 2026 · intermediate