7 ms·

That is hilarious.. I vaguely remember thinking, when I encountered this class of algorithms in college, that it was not particularly well named.

• chamakits 10y ago
  Oh my me too. Every time I come across the concept, I get bothered and feel like I must have missed a core concept of it, as the naming never made any amount of sense for me. For some reason, this truly brings me some amount of peace. Both that the name was applied for non-obvious reasons, and that I'm not the only one to find the name misfitting.
  • akanet 10y ago
    I am genuinely happy to bring you thus tiny closure, friend
    • chamakits 10y ago
      You really did! I never would have thought to check out the history behind it. Would have remained confused if not for you. Thanks!
• prashnts 10y ago
  Oh I wish I'd learned this last year when I had a Dynamic Programming module in Systems' Biology course. The name never particularly made sense to me, and seemed like memoizing was the core principle -- which is definitely smart, but I didn't see a reason how it was dynamic. :)
• DonHopkins 10y ago
  Me to. It's such a vague general purpose complement you could apply to anything, like "elegant programming" or "usefulness oriented". And it turns out that was just why it was chosen!