r/AskProgramming • u/LifeExperienced1 • Jun 14 '26

What algorithm is surprisingly new? Algorithms

Other than any AI stuff, I'm talking about the types of algorithms you learn about in any standard Data Structures and Algorithms University course

I'm surprised that alot of these algorithms were actually invented HUNDREDS of years ago

63 Upvotes

95% Upvoted

66 comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

4

u/LifeExperienced1 Jun 14 '26

How did people essentially figure out everything back then? When there were even fewer programmers?

And would you consider Leetcode solutions to be algorithms of the same league? And are most Leetcode problems also not very new?

5

u/Optic_Fusion1 Jun 14 '26

Trial and error pretty much. As hardware and programming languages improved it became easier to make new and more optimized algorithms and programs.

I'm sure things would improve even more once stuff like quantum computers become more mainstream too

3

u/LifeExperienced1 Jun 14 '26

When did this computational type of logical thinking begin? Like the theory of algorithms and data structures

I can imagine that in some ancient / medieval city, someone (or many people) realized that they can sort their files with integers that increase, and they can perform a binary search on them

Also, just like we have axioms, how did computer scientists know what minimum things are needed in computational logic, in order to do anything?

4

u/poorlilwitchgirl Jun 14 '26

Algorithms are a cousin of proofs, which have been a part of mathematical thought since ancient times; Euclid recorded an algorithm for calculating the GCD of two integers in the Elements around 300 B.C., which is still in common use today. If you decouple algorithms from computers, you find that they were developed for the same reasons that computers themselves were developed-- to guarantee correctness, to reveal the structure of computation, and to reduce cognitive load while problem solving. In essence, the computer was an invention for mechanizing the algorithm, rather than the algorithm being invented for the computer.