Nano Version Control and the Repo as the Next Data Structure in Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence
Lukasz Machowski, Tshilidzi Marwala · 2021
A new data structure called the Nano Version Control (NanoVC) Repo emerges from its origins in the fundamental data structures of computer science as well as from Git. It is acknowledged as a first-class data structure with the added benefit that the software industry already knows how to reason with it because of their experience with using it to version control software. The NanoVC Repo shines a light on the value of nano-scale modelling and in-memory representation of history. An initial implementation shows promising results where it out-performs Git implementations by 2–3 orders of magnitude. A parallel for fairness, transparency and explainability is made between Git (as used for versioning software algorithms) and the NanoVC Repo, which can be used for data structures. Applications of the NanoVC Repo are in computer science, storage and databases, data modelling, distributed and cloud computing, data quality, event streaming, artificial intelligence, and agent-based simulation. The hope is that this data structure is the next major step in computer science and artificial intelligence applications.