Efficiency

Efficiency. Doing things in the shortest amount of time with the fewest resources has always been an obsession of mine. It's why I went into engineering. It's why I get such a kick out of helping businesses work efficiently with well-designed software solutions. It's why I've Google Maps'd, tested and re-tested the hell out of every route and shortcuts to and from work.

I may not be 100% efficient 100% of the time, but dammit, there's an untold elegance in getting a jobs done simply and quickly. And I'm quirky about it.

I caught this article in the latest issue of Wired about the IOI: The International Olympiad in Informatics. The kids are savants on a level that is both foreign and frightening to me. But my god-- is there anything more beautiful than 22 lines of Pascal tearing through a multi-dimensional dataset? I posit not.

Reading through the article, you'll notice that the USA doesn't excel at the IOI in a way you might expect the birthplace of the Internet, personal computer and Furby to excel. Perhaps our performance is a criticism of this country's math and science education standards. Maybe we need to start teaching programming at a younger age. But I doubt it. After all, do you think China and Belarus really have better math and science programs than the United States?

Eh. Actually, maybe they do :-/ But no. The quality of education isn't necessarily the issue.

I just don't think American culture, as a whole, appreciates efficiency the way other nations of the world have learned, out of necessity, to appreciate it. The America I see every day cares about jobs done right and gives bonus points for efficiency. The rest of the world demands efficiency out of necessity. Lack of food. Lack of space. Lack of labor. Lack of technology.

I'm not saying the best coders in the world grew up poor and hungry. Hardly. What I'm saying is this: When you have a deep, personal connection to the realities of scarcity-- maybe in your neighborhood, maybe in your own home-- you begin to make efficiency a part of everything you do. And that sort of edge can really make all the difference, whether you're in a high school coding competition or vying for a promotion in your company.

Something to think about.

I need a more efficient way to find good new music. Any of you Belarusian kids out there wanna design me the next Pandora, so I can get my electro on?