Sequential storage played an important role in computing history and gave rise to some very specialised hardware and methods.  You might think that it is no longer relevant and we can forget the lessons of the past, but sequential storage is still with us and its algorithms are worth knowing.

Spintronics, an emerging technology based on quantum mechanics, is poised to change everything.

This week sees the 40th Anniversary of Ethernet. It was on September 30th 1980 that its formal specification was launched under the auspices of DEC, Intel and Xerox. This article explains why we should celebrate the invention of the first modern computer communications system.  

There can't be a more central concept than “the computer” to what programmers know, but it is such a commonplace that we tend to take it for granted and miss how truly amazing it is. It might just be that computers are everywhere and built into the very fabric of the universe. So what is a computer? What makes it so special?

We often state that program is just a list of instructions, but this does not do justice to the complexity of this apparently simple idea. A the idea of a program exists outside of any particular programming language, but we only get to see and experience it when it has been expressed. This makes it hard to separate the fundamental ideas from language features.

Despite the fact that pointers have been long regarded as "dangerous" they are still deeply embedded in the way we do things. Much of the difficulty in using them stems from not understanding where they originate from. Pointers are a sophisticated abstraction that wraps some fundamentals of assembly language. 

Compilers are an essential part of using a computer - but there was a time when they simply didn't exist. First we had to realize that we needed such a thing and then we had to figure out how to build it.

The stack is a very simple idea. It is a data structure that has only two simple operations and yet not only is it powerful, it is at the heart of modern computing, both theory and practice. Let's find out more about it.

You may not have heard of SMFs, Storage Mapping Functions, but you are likely to have used them. They tend to be overlooked because there are more exciting methods of implementing storage, such as hashing schemes, but really it all started right here with an SMF and there is a sense in which all exciting stuff is just SMFs reinvented. 

The number seven is very important in programming and many other intellectual endeavors. Why is is magic and what significance does it have for us poor limited humans?

Nowadays the McCulloch-Pitts neuron tends to be overlooked in favour of simpler neuronal models, but it was, and still is, important. It proved that something that behaved like a biological neuron was capable of computation and  influenced early computer designers.

John Conway's Life isn't just a fascinating program, it's an example of a cellular automaton. The theory of cellular automata (CA) sounds intimidating, but in fact it's simple and fun. It is a deep mystery how complex things arise from simple things – almost without even seeming to try. And how best to implement it? 

We discover why computer memory can be likened to pigeonholes and even include instructions for you to build your own memory device.

What has modular arithmetic got to do with the real world?
The answer any experienced programmer should give you is "a lot". Not only is it the basis for many an algorithm, it is part of the hardware. 

Monte Carlo methods are powerful ways of getting answers using random numbers to problems that really don't seem to have anything much to do with randomness. For example, you can find Pi and multiply two matrices together all by generating random numbers.

Desktop computer users take the mouse for granted. But where did it come from and how does it work?

You might well think that “chaos” isn’t something that really should be mentioned in the same breath as “computer”, but you’d be wrong. Here's an overview of a  fascinating and disturbing topic and one that every programmer should know something about.

Fractals encompass interesting pure math and computing - and  are very pretty to look at. It is almost a rite of passage that every programmer has to face - write some sort of fractal viewer!

Is the Universe just a big computer?
We have been searching for the theory of the Universe, the Grand Unified Theory, for a long time but could the secret be that the Universe is just a computer…

Many programmers are confused by the range of variations that there are on the humble variable - mainly because the idea is so basic that we just "pick it up" as we go along. This explanation doesn't cover all of the possibilities but enough of them for you to understand the rest.