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> but that can often force a redesign simply to reduce the state space I'm convinced that this idea, or something similar, is essentially what it means to writ

> but that can often force a redesign simply to reduce the state space I'm convinced that this idea, or something similar, is essentially what it means to write "algorithmic code". At a certain level, all code is just an algorithm (i.e. logic + control). But when we talk about Algorithms that one my find in a book on such things, inevitably what you have is code that was written to avoid unnecessary states in order to enforce certain guarantees with regard to performance, security, fault-tolerance, or some other desirable property.

pjc50 7y ago
To me, there's an "algorithm" vs "business logic" continuum, where algorithms operate on cleanly specified mathematical operands and the difficulty is .. mathematical, while business logic isn't conceptually complicated but can be very wordy. A lot of the work in translating a business spec into algorithms is what JoeAltmaier did: enumerate all the cases. You end up with boxes labelled "on Thursdays when the user is in the US Virgin Islands and is using the compact UI", with conflicting assumptions from the postit notes taken from the meetings, and someone has to go and check what should happen in that box.
- lliamander 7y ago
  I agree that there is a continuum. I would say it's based on how easy it is to generalize over the state space. Stuff like sorting, cryptography, and consensus algorithms are often quite amenable to clean generalizations (which is often why abstract algebra can be useful in those domains[0]). There's also another axis which is the strength of the guarantees provided. Most interesting software, whether it is has many or few special cases, has strong guarantees that one is trying to make. Often in order to make stronger guarantees you have to add special case handling, but software which manages to have both strong guarantees and few special cases is the most interesting kind. But even stuff that is littered with special cases, whether it's query engines, control systems, workflow engines, resource schedulers, or chat applications, I think can benefit from the type of algorithmic thinking which strives to make stronger guarantees with fewer special cases. [0]https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22868840 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22868840

pjc50 7y ago

To me, there's an "algorithm" vs "business logic" continuum, where algorithms operate on cleanly specified mathematical operands and the difficulty is .. mathematical, while business logic isn't conceptually complicated but can be very wordy. A lot of the work in translating a business spec into algorithms is what JoeAltmaier did: enumerate all the cases. You end up with boxes labelled "on Thursdays when the user is in the US Virgin Islands and is using the compact UI", with conflicting assumptions from the postit notes taken from the meetings, and someone has to go and check what should happen in that box.

lliamander 7y ago
I agree that there is a continuum. I would say it's based on how easy it is to generalize over the state space. Stuff like sorting, cryptography, and consensus algorithms are often quite amenable to clean generalizations (which is often why abstract algebra can be useful in those domains[0]). There's also another axis which is the strength of the guarantees provided. Most interesting software, whether it is has many or few special cases, has strong guarantees that one is trying to make. Often in order to make stronger guarantees you have to add special case handling, but software which manages to have both strong guarantees and few special cases is the most interesting kind. But even stuff that is littered with special cases, whether it's query engines, control systems, workflow engines, resource schedulers, or chat applications, I think can benefit from the type of algorithmic thinking which strives to make stronger guarantees with fewer special cases. [0]https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22868840 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22868840