3 ms·
A Parabel (1973)
- reframer 3y agoThis is such a lovely parable! Still, I wonder what Dijkstra meant with the sentence > true mathematicians, however, fail to see the point. I would have expected mathematicians to appreciate the nice symmetry of the proposed solution and am curious about the other point of view.
- virtualwhys 3y agoPresumably true mathematicians operate exclusively in the realm of theory and can't understand (the point of) practical implementations, which programmers tend to enjoy when the solution is elegant.
- csours 3y agoCan the turntables hold two cars at a time?
- zvr 3y agoThere is no need to turn the set of two cars -- it always has a toilet in the center so it's symmetrical.
- jp57 3y agoI was sure that they’d return to a toilet in every car by the end, and the moral of the story would be about optimizing for the wrong thing.
- pncnmnp 3y agoMy apologies, I should have submitted the HTML version of this instead - https://www.cs.utexas.edu/users/EWD/transcriptions/EWD03xx/EWD365.html https://www.cs.utexas.edu/users/EWD/transcriptions/EWD03xx/E...
- purplezooey 3y agoEasy problem to solve. Put all the toilet cars up front, charge 3x for those seats, and say everyone else is "complaining about a lords and peasants sort of thing."