We present some computational advancements in the study of Calabi-Yau manifolds obtained as hypersurfaces in toric varieties and use them to construct realistic string compactifications. We start by discussing CYTools, a software package that collects the code developed over multiple years into an easy-to-use toolkit that allows a wide variety of studies, and makes these advancements available to the string theory community. We then closely examine the procedure to construct Calabi-Yau hypersurfaces to obtain an upper bound for the number of distinct manifolds obtainable with this process, and use our computational tools to study ensembles of the Calabi-Yau manifolds with the largest Hodge numbers. Additionally, we devise a novel approach to use machine learning to predict topological properties of these manifolds accurately and efficiently. Then, we present new developments in computational mirror symmetry. We extend established methods to obtain period integrals and Gopakumar-Vafa invariants in even the most intricate Calabi-Yau manifolds. Finally, we conclude by using all of these computational advancements to obtain explicit Anti-de Sitter vacua where the cosmological constants are exponentially small. Although the sign of the curvature in our constructions does not match the one of our universe, it marks an important milestone in the right direction. We hope that these computational tools will continue to assist in building increasingly realistic compactifications.