[ScottBurson]

Well, I'll grant you that lots of people use the word "algorithm" in a way that doesn't respect the distinction andrewla and I are trying to draw.

Nonetheless, I believe there is a real distinction here. As it happens, there is a discussion about algorithms textbooks on HN right now [0]. I contend that GAs are not the kind of thing that would ever be described in a textbook on algorithms, no matter how comprehensive.

> Genetic algorithms can have formally specifiable postconditions, they just aren't definable in terms of the problem space to which they're typically applied.

Actually, I think this would be a pretty good definition of the distinction, if we changed "genetic algorithms" to "heuristics". I think if you look at the procedures described in algorithms textbooks, you'll see they all have postconditions definable in terms of the problem space.

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15423045