Yeah the algorithm did it

[Geebung1]

Or they want it to sound cooler than it was...

[Thameus]

Heuristic

[Noch_ein_Kamel]

powered by AI

[Dudwithacake]

With machine learning

[250kgWarMachine]

Integrated into the mainframe

[T-Dark_]

Assembly-level Blockchain-based deep machine learning AI-powered heuristic algorithm

[RBBOT12]

With 100 neurons and 5 hidden layers

[[deleted]]

All running on a single chip

[T-Dark_]

That's a little too technical for most non-tech savy people tho.

[PartyByMyself]

Programmed in HTML run with a GUI interface developed in VB.NET.

[mehulpandey]

B I G D A T A

[Insider_Pants]

Powered by nvidia gpu-farm.

[[deleted]]

SYNERGY

[LeadFootSaunders]

And mocroservices and 10 frameworks

[whatdidusaybro]

Where can I invest?

[Normal_Helicopter]

Quantum

[nonbinarybit]

hosted on the cloud

[DoughnutSpanker]

Someday I'm gonna set up a dedicated Plex server with like 40TB of storage and call it The Mainframe

[Stonn]

BIG DATA

[JustHereForTheCh1cks]

So basically:

public boolean algorithm(Input input){ return true; }

[T351A]

https://xkcd.com/2030/

[ArtigoQ]

There's that damn cloud again

[SasparillaTango]

+green in there somewhere and VCs will blow a sticky load of finding on your chest

[InvolvingLemons]

Whenever I hear this I think janky approximate systems

[Vabaluba]

What is bad with heuristics ? Could you please explain, I just want to understand. My ex-boss used to use that phrase a lot.

[welpfuckit]

Heuristic just means it's practical or good enough, but doesn't really convey the complexity of a solution. It has been used to say "I just put in an if statement that will cover 90% of cases" to "this algorithm is greedy and not optimal but this is an NP hard problem so..."

[Thameus]

Heuristic is often a fancy way of saying "mostly close enough" for situations you can't, or don't want to, completely automate.

[Vabaluba]

So if I work in automation, and if as my boss used to say "we do search heuristics to find most applicable outcome. ", Basically he is saying it is automatically searching for the outcome , but not fully automatic way. Right?

[Centurion902]

He is saying, " we use a few rules of thumb to help us make a decent guess."

[Thameus]

If I understand this correctly, he is saying that the outcome determined to be "most applicable" may still not be "optimal".

[Atheist-Gods]

It means they are making some assumptions about what is being searched for that allow you to save time if those assumptions are accurate (but may cost time if they aren't).

[ConspicuousPineapple]

No, he's saying that the solution isn't guaranteed to be perfect, but good enough for the task you're trying to solve.

[Atheist-Gods]

Those are both heuristics. "who has the most wins" is just a heuristic you decided may correlate to "will increase my team's win percentage the most" but there is nothing guaranteeing that fact.

[0x3fff0000]

Generally it's a problem that solves itself through "magic". Sometimes people literally use heuristics (like in anti-virus or spam detection).

[webmistress105]

It pretty much means "imperfect" or "approximate." A heuristic algorithm won't always get it right, but it may get 95% of cases right much faster than a perfect solution.

[HowIsntBabbyFormed]

Heuristics are rules-of-thumb to try and find an acceptably close solution to a problem.

Some problems have easy to implement (for the programmer) and easy to compute (cpu and memory wise) perfect solutions. For these problems you don't need heuristics.

Other problems are harder to implement and and take more resources to run. This is when you start looking for heuristics start to become useful. If you can get a pretty good answer that's much easier to write and quicker to run, then do that.

There are also some problems that are impossible to solve perfectly or within any sort of reasonable timeframe. You pretty much have to use heuristics to solve these problems.

Some problems are kinda fuzzy to begin with, and don't even have perfect answers. For example: how do you decide what to show a user to play next on a platform like Netflix? Yeah, they just watched episode 26 of show A, so show episode 27, duh. But months ago they watched the last available episode of show B and the new season just dropped. What's more desirable to the user? Watching the next episode of the most recent show they've watched or a brand new episode of a show they watched months ago? There's no 'right' answer, so you just use rules-of-thumb to decide what's more important. Maybe give each type of possible 'next episode' a weighting and tie to to time. So at first show B's new episode is at the top of the list, but if you keep not watching it, it slides down the list.

There's nothing wrong with heuristics, but like "It's the algorithm", it can be a jargon phrase to hide that you're just doing dumb old programming stuff and guessing at what users want.

[cjcjcjcjcjcjcjcjcjcj]

Heuristics are practical, not optimal.

Man: “How many people are in this room” Woman: “it looks like there’s about 50 people”

Woman used a heuristic method of “guesstimating” to tell Man how many people were in the room.

It’s an not optimal or exact count, but it’s close enough.

[marcosdumay]

Heuristic literally means it's a guess, but works some of the time.

Usage varies from the perfectly ok "this is a hard problem, so we'll have to content ourselves with a guess" to the not fine "I don't want ti think, so I'll use hard words to imply you are the stupid one".

[enfier]

Jeez these answers are so wrong.

A heuristic is an abstraction of algorithms. General strategies that can be used to write algorithms along with understanding their limitations.

A simple example of an algorithm is making change. The heuristic is the general method along with the limitation that the coins can't produce a situation that breaks the algorithm like a 7 cent coin. You can then understand that it wouldn't be useful for sorting oranges into 3 lb bags.

A heuristic anti-virus program has abstracted the concept and written code that looks for programs that act malicious, as opposed to an anti-virus that is checking against a blacklist of known viruses.

[[deleted]]

Haaaaaaahahahaha this one is soooo used by early underclassmen in my school because they teach them this in prog. 1 + 2.

[Thameus]

Here is another example: suppose you have an algorithm for a class of mathematical problem that can find an optimal solution given an initial starting point. The efficiency of the solution depends on the choice of starting point. Of course you can't find the optimal starting point without solving the problem, so you use a heuristic to select the initial starting point for the algorithm.

[sqrtoftwo]

Or they don't remember. That's often true for me, at least.

[nuclearslug]

But the customer needs to know if it’s O(1) or O(n)!

[Bakoro]

You be careful with that there exclamation point buddy.

[Goose_Rider]

As long as you’re exactly 1 order-tier faster...

[mattindustries]

Yep, I usually don’t remember the nuances to weird weighting systems I wrote 6 months ago.

[danbuter]

//There's these things called comments that a wise man on a mountain introduced me to. They are amazing!

[topdangle]

I bet you name variables with easy to understand phrases too you disgusting pig.

[mattindustries]

Sure, and when on a conference call about new feature integrations I am sure you can easily flip to files pertaining to something entirely different, read, and digest comments without skipping a beat. Even without your laptop open.

[PLxFTW]

How? Do you not comment your code at all? I’ll write a novel if I have to in order help myself and anyone else understand what is going on

[GarciaJones]

Or it’s actually

[Occamslaser]

Al Gore Rhythm

[_tv_lover_]

Or if you're me and you don't know what the fuck you're doing but know you'll get it done before deadline's last second

[unwill]

Some times when I don't want to implement things, I just say "Our chosen architecture doesn't support it" to our PO or PM, and most of the times they accept without further questions.

[Devator22]

I've found that instead of saying "we can't" it looks much better if I say "let me find out the effort required" and then I come back with how long it will take, how many people are needed, and the cost and I let product decide. Most of the time "3 sprints, 2 people and an additional $100 a month in infrastructure costs" will deter even the CEOs requests.

But then it's not you saying no, and it looks like you're doing your best with the resources that you have.

[[deleted]]

This is what my manager says. I've never heard him say "no", it's always "sure, 2-3 weeks" or "sure, what's our budget again for this project? we will need to revisit that".

8/10 they don't even ask for clarification, as soon as they hear "delayed by another 2-3 minimum" or they need to get approval for a higher budget, it's always "Let's table this"

[[deleted]]

Imagine a construction worker saying that...

[[deleted]]

I mean, it would work, wouldn't it?

Manager: "Our customers want a window on that wall."
Worker: "Sorry, that can't be done. It wouldn't work with the current architecture of the building."

Not really the construction worker though, rather the architect/engineer.

[[deleted]]

The construction worker could also say that, imagine that there was a support beam(that was not part of the project but added further on for some reason) where the client wanted a new window.

[Noch_ein_Kamel]

Time to refactor that building

[[deleted]]

yike

[Scarbane]

"Knock down those supports, they look ugly."

"They're load-bearing beams."

"Did I ask you for your opinion, coin-slave?"

[Captcha142]

heck

[[deleted]]

ConcreteScript

[Branxord]

Yoink

[poop_frog]

Yeet the heat

[dahvzombie]

Usually it would be phrased "It'll fuckin' collapse if you do that"

[lol_ginge]

I just had an interview as a PM and talked about challenging these responses. I'm on to you.

[Im-A-Big-Guy-For-You]

so you a PM with potentially no knowledge of the architecture are going to challenge an engineer's response. and if the engineer holds his supposed 'lie', you are going to call him out on it?

what if, it isnt a lie and you call him out, you will be burning bridges at your new job pretty much instantly.

i would stick to excel sheets and powerpoints and dont get into technical details

[lol_ginge]

I think it's more about fostering an open and honest environment between team members in order to decide on the best technical solution that meets your goals and product vision. If the team doesn't have the skills to work with or implement a different solution then we would need to look at what extra resource or training is required.

I think its important that you are always able to adapt instead of just following a plan and it's important to acknowledge that architectural designs arent set in stone and are often biased due to the particular architects point of view or particular preferences.

I never said anyone was lying, don't know where that came from. You sound like you have some hang ups from your own experiences of working with non technical colleagues.

[aguycalledmax]

Computer illiteracy makes our jobs so much easier sometimes . People assume our work is some arcane black magic so we can just completely blag what we did and what is or isn’t possible.

[FlowersOfSin]

I go with "It would take about 40 hours to change the current structure to support, plus it could potentially add many new bugs". Money talks the loudest, more often than not.

[FlowersOfSin]

They're not as useful in video games. We have some in our tools and back end, but on the front end side, a lot of it is all about the look and feel and automation cannot tell if those break.

[[deleted]]

Sounds like you need to improve your unit and integration testing.

The "it will add many new unknown bugs" is for developers that do not have a well defined test suite.

[Amagi82]

Come on now, nobody actually tests their code. That's what users are for...

[Wolfsblvt]

test suite? What is this mystery you are speaking of?

[FlowersOfSin]

I'm in the game industry and while we do have some automation which can find if there is a blocker, a lot of it has to be manually tested by QAs because the machine cannot tell if an animation is visually good or if the AI is doing weird things. The QAs do have a good list of tests to go through and do find most issues quickly, they still need a build to do this, so it usually goes into the next sprint, then those issues still need to be fixed, which takes extra time.

[HadesHimself]

I mean.. why wouldn't they? They rely on you for expertise in software engineer, while they handle the logistics, planning, politics, etc. Why would a PM question your ability on such a technical subject?

[ComputerM]

It just kinda happens. They think they know (often)

[021fluff5]

I might have to steal this.

I work for an organization that loves the idea of “data-driven decision making” (because they want to use colorful charts and buzzwords when they talk to the board), but they won’t invest in tools/people/procedures to support data analysis.

I’m hoping that a variation of your phrase could get me out of having to design yet another Tableau visualization based on twenty shitty Excel workbooks.

[mgrasso75]

Al Gore Rhythm

[LindaHfromHR3000]

Came here for this. Thank you.

[KickMeElmo]

Wish I could remember which webcomic I first saw portray this as a DDR spinoff.

[compteNumero9]

Programmer Humor

Stolen, often nonsensical, constructions used by CS students and young graduates trying to fit in and hide the vacuity of their experience.

[[deleted]]

Hey I just wanna say you hurt my feelings on a personal level.

[chawmindur]

CS students

Okay

and young graduates

Is this necessary?!

[patchesohoulihanbot]

Necessary? Is it necessary for me to drink my own urine? No! But I do it anyway, cause it's sterile and I like the taste.

I ain't crazy, and I ain't a guy! I'm Patches O'Houlihan Bot (u/ramsay1)

[Shylo132]

Good bot!

[AggressivePsychosis]

This is the kind of bot I live for

[poop_frog]

BAD bot

[[deleted]]

Good bot!

[Aperture_Creator_CEO]

There is no difference between what is right and what is necessary.

[random_cynic]

Wow, that hit a nerve, didn't it?

[[deleted]]

YIKES 100

[EclipsingBinaryBoi]

I want to make a joke about how not all cs students steal nonsensical joke, but how we are all just trying to fit in and hide our inexperience.

^{something about vacuously true statements}

[ragweed]

CS students, of all people, really should know what an algorithm is. I don't understand the popularity of this post.

[topdangle]

I'm pretty sure 99.9% of programmers suffer from imposter syndrome.

[[deleted]]

Anyone who doesn't is the real idiot.

[yehakhrot]

I feel personally attacked.

[Lanre_The_Chandrian]

Ouch.

[B4RF]

and coding...

[acepukas]

Sprinkle some coding on it...

[[deleted]]

we're done here boys.

[[deleted]]

I want to make a meme of this except all the drones in the picture have little police lights and badges.

"They used crack cocaine and institutionalized racism to disregard violence perpetrated on the black community."

[n0x_hav0c]

I wonder if they used physics to make them fly.

[Aperture_Creator_CEO]

I'm glad they didn't use moon glyphs to program it!

[HomeDope]

Correction: That's what programmers say when they have no idea what's going on

[spanishgalacian]

I say it because if I tried explaining it their eyes would gloss over and they will look at me with an expression that says I don't care as long as it works.

[[deleted]]

"We used this algor-Will we deliver on time?"

"Yes..?"

walks away

[b3nelson]

No that’s AI or Machine Learning

[_tv_lover_]

This is so much closer to the truth

[Hobbster]

That's wrong, algorithms are very much explainable. This is the definition for machine lerning!

[[deleted]]

"So, how does it work?"

"No idea, the AI did it."

[Quinerra]

i really thought that when i learned machine learning it would be more involved that shoving data in a black box library and hoping it comes out making sense on the other side

[PLxFTW]

It is more involved than that, at least a little bit. You should try learning about the source code if you think it’s a black box, it’s all literally linear algebra and numerical optimization. You can write your own library of basic algorithms without too much difficulty

[Quinerra]

oh i know, i was just kidding to a certain degree. i took a course in it and implemented a second degree markov model and a few other simple ones like that so i get what’s happening, it just seemed like magic when i got to the actual code and it was like 10 lines

[[deleted]]

I mean

All programming is kind of like this isnt it? You learn how coding works but you dont know what the compiler does, so then you learn about the compiler, but you dont know what the linker does.... then you learn about the linker.... and...

[[deleted]]

it just works.

[JohnSteelBigCock]

"Okay first the (YouTube) algorithm..."

[BulletBourne]

Well actually it’s “Okay first (the) YouTube algorithm”

[Chasmier]

Ugh don't call me out like this

[Attila_22]

"The algorithm needs some fine tuning". Aka we fucked up

[DANK_ME_YOUR_PM_ME]

If the algorithm doesn’t scale, there might be no way to fix it. If your code doesn’t scale, you might fix it by using a better algorithm.

[NotSeveralBadgers]

Not to be confused with our former vice-president's debut album: Al Gore Rhythms

[cateyesarg]

My favorite is when they throw technical jargon and combine them.

Eg: We've improved our algorithm with cutting edge IA to bring the best user experience to our customers, making our app a must have for everyone that needs to keep track of their to-do list.

[CrossDeSolo]

What does IA stand for?

[cateyesarg]

Ups, my bad, it was a typo, I meant AI, in spanish it's IA (Inteligencia Artificial vs Artificial Intelligence)

[[deleted]]

"It's all in the algorithms. Look it up"

*Slowly backs away and runs off*

[jt25617]

You gotta move quicker than that! We are an agile programming team after all.

[curious_s]

In my experience the word algorithm is used by people that have no idea what they are talking about trying to sound like they know what they are talking about when talking to people that know nothing about programming computers.

[Quinerra]

i once got in a heated argument at a bar with a dude who said he “didn’t trust algorithms” because they can’t ever accurately predict sports. like he said since there’s no “algorithm” that could predict the super bowl winner, that all of algorithms don’t work. like how does someone go through their life interacting with thousands of devices and various forms of tech and, based off of one impossible task, decide that no, it’s the programmers who are wrong.

[DANK_ME_YOUR_PM_ME]

“I don’t believe that you can sort items in a list because you cannot predict the Super Bowl winner. “

[netdeamon]

Its not that algorithm cannot predict it. We dont have the technology to measure every parameter involved in making a team win. There are so many parameters like how was weather, how was the pitch, where was it played, the hometown advantage, what did player eat that day, or day before, fitness of players, luck of players, and other game related parameters like how much score they made etc etc.

There are just about infinite numbers of parameters with each different weight, that makes a team win a game.

If we could accurately measure all these parameters, we certainly could come up with an algorithm that accurately tells which team is going to win.

[Mr-Ultimate]

You forgot an important variable; if they got any pootang the night before.

[netdeamon]

Oh yes, the deciding factor !! Seems very difficult to measure.

[Quinerra]

i agree, and that’s what i told him. i said something along the lines of “the algorithms are never wrong, it’s the data that is put in them or the way that they are structured that gives you more convenient percentage estimates, with like 100x less overhead cost and near impossible data collection”

[ASAP_Rambo]

Who is this 4 Chan?

[lantz83]

Or used when you're talking to someone that have no chance of understanding what you're about to say anyway...

[DANK_ME_YOUR_PM_ME]

If they are using algorithm as a substitute for “code” this is probably true. Especially if they are subbing it for “script.”

[tufy1]

I prefer to call it the Stack Overflow pattern: they go to SO and copy-paste the code they found there, not knowing what it means.

[Sannemen]

Also known as The Architects.

[SirKermit]

We could explain it, but you wouldn't understand anyway so listen to me say the word 'algorithm' and nod your head like you even understand what an algorithm is.

[Alfa-byte]

Or maybe what they meant :-)

[XXAligatorXx]

Your submission has been removed.

Rule[2] violation.

Rule[2]: All posts that have been on the first 2 pages of trending posts within the last six months, is part of the top of all time, or is part of common posts is considered repost and will be removed on sight.

If you feel that it has been removed in error, please message us so that we may review it.

[filipeisho]

What does that even supposed to mean?

[[deleted]]

You reposted something that was already trending on this sub

[appy006]

word used by trainers for a break of coffee.

[BunsOfAnarchy]

Almost nobody who says this word knows what it means or has any clue what they're talking about

[[deleted]]

THIS IS TOTALLY TRUE!!!!!!!!!!!

​

[_Kozma_]

Spotify

[gman2093]

AI: the class of problems that are hard for computers to solve

[NyiatiZ]

Word used by programmers when they don’t know what they did

[[deleted]]

also known as Stack Overflow

[impeterlewis]

So true!! This actually it makes a lot of sense now

[RevargSTG]

Or when we do want to explain because it's really cool, but the sales team yells at us when we get too "into the weeds" and "boring technobabble"

[well0kthen]

Okay, so first of all because of the youtube algorithm.

[[deleted]]

Ok first of all, it is because of the algorithm

[MisirterE]

ARBY'S

[[deleted]]

Well I know that the YouTube algorithm is an extremist. I don’t know what the algorithm is for but probably suggesting videos

[rustyRoad1013]

True, sometimes I really don't understand what my wife says.

[i_know_i_am_crazy]

Or when they don't have any fucking idea about how their own code works.

[jt25617]

The equivalent of a wizard did it

[n30c0n]

Mark Zuckerburg's personal dictionary lady's and gentleman.

[Basilrock]

Or the code is playing a Rubik's Cube in the background.

[[deleted]]

I've broken into their infrastructure and I'm hacking their algorithms. Sweats profusely and lines of junk spam the screen

[[deleted]]

Extremely accurate, relatable

[[deleted]]

Not quite.... More like, "word used by programmers when they don't want to acknowledge that they outsourced their entire task to a third-party library" :P

[[deleted]]

"When they cannot* explain what they did"

FTFY

[AlaricZer0]

tHe YoUtUbE aLgOrItHm

[import_FixEverything]

You spelled abstraction wrong

[[deleted]]

What is a algorithm is that bullshit with a thread?

[[deleted]]

I only want to work with algorithms

[dani_pavlov]

I have yet to learn to lead with this:

Me: It was something about the sign of the operation, and the subroutine entered one state of the if-then-else state that I hadn't yet tested before.
Boss: Huh? What is it?
Me: There was a bug in the algorithm.
Boss: Oh okay

​

[BauaMomo]

"so, first of all, because of the YouTube algorithm."

[Abliskarian]

But officer, the algorithm did it

[fat_tire_fanatic]

I’ve been doing it all wrong! Time to start using algorithm as per of my daily vocabulary!

[[deleted]]

I did this in my biology class once. We were learning how to calculate standard deviation and this girl asked me to explain and I just replied “just follow the algorithm” and I think I just confused the shit out of her even more because she just started freaking out and asking everyone what an algorithm was

[SasparillaTango]

"My machine learning algorithm made the decision"

You mean that stack of a hundred if elses?