At about 2500 A.D., humankind discovers a computer problem that *must* be
solved. The only difficulty is that the problem is NP complete and will
take thousands of years even with the latest optical biologic technology
available. The best computer scientists sit down to think up some solution.
In great dismay, one of the C.S. people tells her husband about it. There
is only one solution, he says. Remember physics 103, Modern Physics, general
relativity and all. She replies, "What does that have to do with solving
a computer problem?"
"Remember the twin paradox?"
After a few minutes, she says, "I could put the computer on a very
fast machine and the computer would have just a few minutes to calculate but
that is the exact opposite of what we want... Of course! Leave the
computer here, and accelerate the earth!"
The problem was so important that they did exactly that. When
the earth came back, they were presented with the answer:
brute force adj.
Describes a primitive programming style
one in which the programmer relies on the computer's processing
power instead of using his or her own intelligence to simplify the
problem, often ignoring problems of scale and applying naive
methods suited to small problems directly to large ones....
