this post was submitted on 04 Nov 2025
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iiiiiiitttttttttttt

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I guess now we finally know why Babbage never finished building the Analytical Engine.

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[–] jjjalljs@ttrpg.network 87 points 1 month ago (27 children)

I always assumed they were asking if it was rigged.

Like, i can write function sum(a, b) that always returns 10, and impress people how it's correct when I pass in 1,9 and 2,8 and 3,7. But if I pass in 7,7 it'll still return the "right" answer of 10, because it's rigged and not actually doing math.

[–] Deebster@programming.dev 123 points 1 month ago (13 children)

That's a good point, but a few decades of talking to clients has led to a number of conversations like this where they want it to "just work", even if they've input the wrong information.

[–] grue@lemmy.world 30 points 1 month ago (1 children)
[–] drcobaltjedi@programming.dev 33 points 1 month ago

One time my boss asked me to basically solve the Travelling salesman problem.

My first pass at ot was a simple grab closest neighbor solution, but that left a slightly unoptimal path and my boss asked me to "fix" it. I explained to him why, no, I can't make it both fast amd accurate, pick one, while also showing him that wikipedia page. I was so mad when he said just make it more accurate ignoring now it takes hours to run sometimes only to save 10 seconds of a machine moving.

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