The Prompt & The Ponder
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computer-science

2 articles

Bounded Wrongness: A Field Guide to Probabilistic Data Structures

Bloom filters and their descendants trade a bounded, one-sided, tunable error for a space collapse exact structures can't match. The whole family, with the math.

June 28, 2026

·bloom-filteralgorithms

Context-Free Grammars Weren't Invented in the 1950s

The 2,500-year history of formal grammar, from Pāṇini's Sanskrit rules to BNF, and why someone proposed renaming it 'Panini-Backus Form' in 1967.

January 13, 2026

·historycomputer-science