[mcv]

But isn't that the same with everything? Someone independently inventing Quantum Mechanics right now is too late to get any recognition from it. There's a good reason by Newton and Leibnitz argued who invented calculus, or why Darwin hastened the publication of his book when he found out that Wallace was on the same track. Being the first to do something gets rewarded.

Of course people had wondered about binary search before 2009. So in this case the reward is for being the first to do X, but on Stackoverflow.