Some things are just beautiful. It’s hard to explain, you just feel they are.

The algorithm for creating NFAs from regular expressions (called Thompson’s construction) is beautiful. It’s hard to explain, I just feel the beauty. It’s in its simplicity, and in its power.

Is this what those Other Guys (TM) feel when they read a piece of poetry or see a painting – and call it beautiul ? I wonder.

Related posts:

1. Book review: “Beautiful Code”, edited by Andy Oram & Greg Wilson
2. NFA, cpp
3. bootstrapping parsers
4. Book review: “Eugene Onegin” by A.S. Pushkin
5. Book review: “The Flanders Panel” by Arturo Perez Reverte

This entry was posted on Monday, October 27th, 2003 at 00:36 and is filed under Math, Programming. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.