I found a solution which I'm pretty happy about.

Take a good piece of double-sided velcro (that will bond to itself), about 10-20cm. Get a short, screw with a large, flat head. Put the screw through the middle of the velcro strip, and screw it onto the underside of your table, somewhere out of sight. Rinse, repeat.

Now you have velcro loops that can carry all your wires really neatly, with infinite and easy reconfigurability.

(Initially, I tried gluing / velcroing the velcro strips on. It never lasted, so I went with screws instead. That really works!)

Because you can't compile a mathematical definition.

If we imagine that the hash function came only as a mathematical definition, how would your test your new implementation in LangOfTheWeek is correct?

Well, you have 2 options. One, you can prove that your program behaves, in every important way, the same as the definition. This is long, tedious work, and most programmers don't even have the necessary skills for this. Two, you can make a reference implemention in some other language, and compare the outputs.

Now, given, say, 100 programmers each working on their own functions, we should have 1 resulting behaviour. This will mean that everybody implemented the algorithm 100% correctly. However, the actual number will be between 1 and 100, depending on the skills of the programmers, and the care they've taken in implementing the functions.

Now, what's the result here? (no pun intended). It's likely to be chaos.

That's why it's very convenient to have a single reference source.