the.com/lookup table
precompute once, cheat forever — the programmer's version of writing crib notes.
means a data structure that trades memory for speed by storing precomputed answers instead of recalculating them every time.
from predates computers entirely — sailors used trigonometry lookup tables, and artillery gunners used range tables, long before silicon made the trick electric.
log tablesreplaced slide-rule math for 300 years before calculators
chess enginesstore millions of precomputed endgame positions
gpu shadersuse color lookup tables to fake film stocks
tradeoffpure space-for-time, the oldest cheat in computing
for instance
sine cosine tables — used in navigation and engineering since the 1500s
gamma correction luts — every monitor and camera applies one instantly
rainbow tables — precomputed password hashes that broke early encryption schemes
dns cache — stores resolved domains so browsers skip repeat queries