A Parabel (1973)

[pncnmnp]

https://www.cs.utexas.edu/users/EWD/transcriptions/EWD03xx/EWD365.html

[reframer]

This is such a lovely parable! Still, I wonder what Dijkstra meant with the sentence

> true mathematicians, however, fail to see the point.

I would have expected mathematicians to appreciate the nice symmetry of the proposed solution and am curious about the other point of view.

[virtualwhys → reframer]

Presumably true mathematicians operate exclusively in the realm of theory and can't understand (the point of) practical implementations, which programmers tend to enjoy when the solution is elegant.

[jp57]

I was sure that they’d return to a toilet in every car by the end, and the moral of the story would be about optimizing for the wrong thing.

[csours]

Can the turntables hold two cars at a time?

[zvr → csours]

There is no need to turn the set of two cars -- it always has a toilet in the center so it's symmetrical.

[purplezooey]

Easy problem to solve. Put all the toilet cars up front, charge 3x for those seats, and say everyone else is "complaining about a lords and peasants sort of thing."

[pncnmnp]

My apologies, I should have submitted the HTML version of this instead - https://www.cs.utexas.edu/users/EWD/transcriptions/EWD03xx/E...