How is the Library of Babel website isn’t lagging like crazy?
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the idea of the library of babel is the old “can a monkey on a typewriter write shakespeare given infinite time?” thanks to pseudorandom number generators we don’t actually need a monkey and we don’t need to make it type ahead of time and store the books it types.
“pseudorandom” means that the numbers a generator makes are not truly random, though they’re close enough to random that they can substitute for true random numbers. you start with a seed number, and then the pRNG algorithm does math to it to expand it into an infinite string of numbers, which the library then converts into letters and chops up into books.
because it’s pseudorandom and not true random, if you use the same seed you’ll always get the same string of numbers.
so they don’t have to store all those books. when you type in a query or browse the shelves, they just run the pRNG until it gets to whatever you’re looking for. then when you’re done they delete the data, and generate it again when someone else queries it. since it always uses the same seed, everyone gets the same set of books every time they use the library, but they don’t actually need to store the books.
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