Algorithm time capsule

Kragen Javier Sitaker, 2016-08-11 (1 minute)

What languages have the most important algorithms written in them? That is, what languages would you have to implement in a time capsule virtual machine in order to preserve our most important algorithmic knowledge?

There’s an enormous amount of software written in C, but generally the algorithms are implemented in a fairly tailored fashion — they aren’t generalizable beyond the specific application, so they have to be written again for the next time. And it takes a lot of C code to get anything done.

My guess is on the following list:

Unfortunately, this probably still doesn’t cover most of the classic algorithms you’d find in an algorithms textbook, at least in a reusable way. Some of them have generic implementations in C++, but C++ is far too hairy to hope to support.

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