Computer Science

Why IEEE floating point as two zeroes: +0 and -0 johndcook.com/blog/2010/06/1…

'OOP does model the real world! Things at the top of the hierarchy seemingly do nothing but tell those at the bottom what to do.' -- @fogus

Linear bounded automata accept context-sensitive languages.

Queues are first in, first out (FIFO). Stacks are last in, first out. (LIFO).

“One particular talent stands out among the world-class programmers I’ve known—namely, an ability to move effortlessly between different levels of abstraction.” — Donald Knuth

'... the best programs are the ones written when the programmer is supposed to be working on something else.' -- Melinda Varian

Making public keys easy to factor by corrupting them using Rowhammer johndcook.com/blog/2019/06/2…

'If a project elicits a sense of being lost, begin from the bottom up.' -- The Joy of Clojure

Mathematics Distillation Challenge – Equational Theories terrytao.wordpress.com/2026/03/13/mat…

Enormous book on random number generation available for download luc.devroye.org/rnbookindex.ht…

In an AVL tree, subtrees of each node have heights that differ by at most one.

Resources on unum and posit computing posithub.org/khub

Cheap gradient principle: Using automatic differentiation, a scalar-valued function and its directional gradient can be computed in no more than 4x the time required just to evaluate the function.

"It has long been my personal view that the separation of practical and theoretical work is artificial and injurious." -- Christopher Strachey

Hashing names or SSNs does not protect privacy johndcook.com/blog/2019/07/2…

The ENIAC (1946) was capable of 5,000 operations per second.

'Because of its vitality, the computing field is always in desperate need of new clichés: Banality soothes our nerves.' -- Alan Perlis

There are 24 hours in a day, so there must be 24 time zones. How hard could it be? :)

Approximate minimal bounding sphere johndcook.com/blog/2021/08/0…