Succinct Data Structures
Why Hacker News recommends it
Commenters credit it as the place they first learned about succinct data structures, and found it left a lasting impression.
What it is
Edward Kmett's 2013 talk at Prezi in Budapest on succinct data structures, which store data in close to the information-theoretic minimum space while supporting fast queries. It ties together the research and walks through his Haskell succinct library.
Recommended by 1 HN commenters across 1 different months, 2017 to 2025.
What Hacker News said
Strong rec KirinDave · 2018-05 · on “Algorithms Behind Modern Storage Systems”
I don't feel like it tonight. Drinking whiskey and trying not to think about how effed up the Israel footage and the North Korea situation are. Maybe that's why it's not the best post. I don't mean to crap on the work presented. Great article, good summary, and the tech is solid. It's just older than what excites me; a lot of progress has been made in 20 years and the majority of it hasn't found commercial applications. But here is a citation root for a lot of amazing work in this space: [LINK] My absolute hero Edward Kmett gave a talk stitching a lot of this work together a long time ago: [this video] . I have no idea if he's pursued it, it's just one of his many talks that left me with an incre
Cites js8 · 2017-05 · on “Writing a Fast JSON Parser”
I find it mildly amusing that people are competing on the fastest decoder of horribly inefficient format. Don't get me wrong, I like e.g. ZX Spectrum demos, but the practical utility of such endeavor is questionable. But that aside, I wonder how this compares to the compressed indexes approaches (see [this video] and [LINK] ), obviously, once the index is built.
Cites kccqzy · 2025-03 · on “Succinct data structures”
I first heard of the concept of succinct data structures from Edward Kmett, a famous Haskeller behind many popular Haskell libraries. He gave a talk on succinct data structures a long time ago: [this video]