The history behind the term is pretty interesting to me: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dynamic_programming#History https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dynamic_program

The history behind the term is pretty interesting to me: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dynamic_programming#History https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dynamic_programming#History The original research on the subject was published in engineering / optimization as opposed to computer science, and the term "programming" was used differently there ("linear programming" and "quadratic programming" for example). Now we think of it not as an optimization problem but as an algorithm design technique, but the name still stuck around.