[slashnull]

There's that bit which made me chuckle at first, then think. A lot. When he shows an algorithm written in prose, then in modern mathematical notation.

The real leap forward here? User interface.

Everywhere I look, I see instances of that same pattern:

One person or small team of very clever people develops a given technique or algorithm, and a gigantic army of technological lumberjacks go out and progressively make it easy to use.

And it's not just UI as in "the paying consumer of a product"; it's UI as in the person which will build the previous UI, and to person which builds that person's tools, and so on, turtles all the way down.

Progress is not algorithms, progress is not ease of use; it's (power of an algorithm / ease of its use).

In the end, progress in user interface is progress, _period_.