Reddit Sort: The World's Least Efficient Algorithm

Ah, the irony of modern tech! Here's a vintage book teaching "Artificial Intelligence in BASIC" from what looks like the 80s, sitting right next to "EXPERT SYSTEMS" on the bookshelf. Fast forward to 2023, and we're all losing our minds over ChatGPT and friends—billion-dollar AI systems built on Python, a language that would make your CPU cry if you asked it to calculate 2+2 in less than half a second. The cosmic joke is that we've gone from programming AI in languages designed to be "Beginner's All-purpose" to building world-changing models with a language where indentation errors can crash your entire system. Somewhere, this book's author is either laughing hysterically or weeping uncontrollably.

The meme brilliantly combines two classic computer science nightmares: the Traveling Salesman Problem and the Trolley Problem. In one, you're trying to find the optimal path through a complex graph (a famously NP-hard problem that makes algorithms cry). In the other, you're deciding which track to send a runaway trolley down, usually with moral implications about who gets squished. The joke is that instead of optimizing for the shortest path or making a moral choice, our protagonist is choosing the path with the most people to run over. It's basically what happens when your pathfinding algorithm has a vendetta against humanity. Dijkstra would be horrified... or impressed, depending on his mood that day.

College professors living in 2010. Rejecting modern frameworks and buzzwords with a dismissive hand, but absolutely glowing at the prospect of making students implement bubble sort for the 47th time. Nothing says "preparing you for the industry" like coding algorithms nobody's written from scratch since the Bush administration.

The so-called "advanced AI" for processing insurance claims? Just a Python script that flips a coin! The code imports the random module and uses random.choice() to pick between "deny" and "approve" with equal probability. Next time your claim gets rejected, remember it wasn't because of your pre-existing condition—it was because RNGesus wasn't in your favor today. Sophisticated machine learning my foot! It's literally the computational equivalent of "eeny, meeny, miny, moe" but with fewer steps.

The bell curve of developer self-awareness strikes again. On the far left, we have blissfully mediocre developers who know they're mediocre and have made peace with it. In the middle, the anxious majority frantically collecting skills like Pokémon cards because some LinkedIn influencer told them to. And on the far right, the enlightened souls who've mastered enough to realize that "mediocre" is just corporate-speak for "has a life outside of Stack Overflow." The true galaxy brain move is accepting your mediocrity while still getting paid the same as the try-hards.

OH. MY. GOD. This coding interview question is the FINAL BOSS of absurdity! 💀 They want you to find the meaning of life in an INFINITE array with O(log(🍆)) time complexity and NO EXTRA MEMORY?! Excuse me while I dramatically faint onto my keyboard! The eggplant emoji in the Big O notation is just the chef's kiss of ridiculousness. Like, sure honey, I'll just casually process infinity, find existential truth, AND do it with vegetable-logarithmic efficiency. All before lunch! The "return it anyway" if it doesn't exist part is the algorithmic equivalent of "just make something up if you don't know the answer." Pure chaos energy!