4 ms·
> I'll explain it in CS terms. What would happen if all copies of the quicksort algorithm were destroyed overnight? Someone would spend a few hours and write an
by mcav 18y ago
> I'll explain it in CS terms. What would happen if all copies of the quicksort algorithm were destroyed overnight? Someone would spend a few hours and write another one because he/she knows about the algorithm. It would take about an hour.
That's like saying you just woke up in a Blacksmith's shop, with the anvil and fire ready. That's the last mile, which isn't the hard part. Compare it to destroying all traces of CPUs and computer hardware/software. Okay, now go fabricate a processor.
- tesseract 18y agoOkay, now go fabricate a processor. Step 1: Go and build a glassblowing shop.
- blackguardx 18y agoI don't think I am explaining myself well. What I mean to say is that once you know about an invention, reproducing it is much less difficult than actually inventing it. Do you disagree? In high school, I was obsessed with metalworking and built several forges. I played around with melting metal and forging blades. I created charcoal. I read everything I could get my hands on about blacksmithing. I read a lot of fiction books about rebuilding post-apocalyptic societies. I guess I have a different perspective.
- mburns 18y agoI understand where you are going. If we lost it all tomorrow, it would be quite hard to reproduce tools, machinery, high precision equipment, etc. to get back to where we are. For new inventions, you need both to do all the building of the machinery that builds that machine that will build the new invention, but you also need the novel new idea that is the invention to be made. 2 hard (and quite different) problems to solve, instead of just the first (which, as mentioned, is ridiculously hard in and of itself).