Programming Yoda, Grocery Delivery and Existence
Neologism #4, 30.01.2022
The Yoda of Silicon Valley
Donald Knuth, master of algorithms, reflects on 50 years of his opus-in-progress, “The Art of Computer Programming.”
Accessible to non-technical people, the biography of Knuth and his interests. How has his work greatly influenced the art of programming today?
The Google Trips app, created in 2016, is an “orienteering algorithm” that maps out a day’s worth of recommended touristy activities. The team was working on “maximizing the quality of the worst day” — for instance, avoiding sending the user back to the same neighborhood to see different sites. They drew inspiration from a 300-year-old algorithm by the Swiss mathematician Leonhard Euler, who wanted to map a route through the Prussian city of Königsberg that would cross each of its seven bridges only once. Dr. Knuth addresses Euler’s classic problem in the first volume of his treatise. (He once applied Euler’s method in coding a computer-controlled sewing machine.)
The Yoda of Silicon Valley in The New York Times
The Rise of Grocery Delivery
A niche and unfamiliar channel deals with a rarely discussed new section of city business with lovely animations. What could be better? Do we even know what fast grocery delivery is?
What may stand out is their presence everywhere, be it through their riders or their advertising that you may have even seen before watching this video.
We already know common couriers on bicycles and food deliveries. But this is completely new. Shopping pushed to the extreme thanks to technology.
Watch The Rise of Grocery Delivery from Romulus
Why does anything exist?
Why does anything exist? Why is there something rather than nothing? Wouldn’t nothing have been so much easier?
The philosophical essay explores perhaps the most interesting questions in the history of mankind. Note, it's a long read.
Why does anything exist? in Always Asking
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