Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by eloisant 335 days ago
I also discovered the term "dynamic programming" 20 years in my career, when doing leetcode training for a job interview.

I still have no idea why it's called "dynamic".

2 comments

> I still have no idea why it's called "dynamic".

Neither did I – until I read TFA :)

Ditto, it took me years to figure out "dynamic programming". It sounded hard and complicated! When I finally figured out wtf it meant I felt anger instead of relief - what an absolutely asinine name for what is otherwise a simple (but valuable) concept.

Our industry has a bad habit of this, where we name things in such a way that make them harder to explain.

See for example one of my other pet peeves: "lambdas". Sounds fancy and difficult! Sounds like a concept you may read about in a research paper! The reality is that it's really quite simple, and we do ourselves a disservice when we name things like this.