what is consistent hashing? even before that what is even ‘hashing’? why is it even needed?

-Hashing is basically taking random-ass inputs and then converting into a fixed size value. for eg: - Vishal 123123 (fixed 6 digit number) - userId_21343 432145

-it is needed for fast-lookups(Hashmaps), Distribution(Partitioning/Sharding), and Indexing.

how big of a text can be hashed?? -Cryptographic hash functions can process text of virtually any size from a single char to multiple terabytes of data.