The AndPlus Software Development Blog

Humankind had been cooking rice for over 12,000 years before someone had the bright idea of automating the process with rice-cooking appliances. (Why we needed to automate a process that runs mostly without human intervention anyway is a debate for another time.) Although the electric rice steamer (some models of which could be considered “robots” in the broadest sense of the term) didn’t revolutionize the culinary arts the way, say, fire did, it’s just one small example of the surprising application of technology in an area one might not consider “high tech.”

Once upon a time, photography was all about delayed gratification. You couldn’t see the results of your efforts until you had taken the film someplace to be developed and printed—a process that could take a day or more. And if you didn’t take many pictures, the roll of film might stay in your camera for months before you finished the roll and took it in for processing. If the photos were out of focus, too light, too dark, or poorly composed, you were out of luck.

A friend recently shared an item on Facebook that described the top 10 developer excuses, including things like “it worked yesterday” and “you must have a virus.” The number one excuse: “It works fine on my machine!”

The events of Sept. 11, 2001—as well as those of many large-scale disasters since then—highlighted the shortcomings of the communications systems used by first-responder emergency services agencies. Various police, fire, and emergency medical services personnel operated on different radio communication channels and thus could not share information with each other. Even within agencies, communication channels became overloaded with traffic. It was clear that the traditional network of dispatchers, command centers, vehicle radios, and walkie-talkies was not up to the task, and a better solution was needed.

You ever open up instagram ready to consume some Grade-A content but immediately start seeing posts from '5 Days Ago' at the top of your feed? That's because Instagram sucks at algorithms and want to ruin your life.

You ever have a dream about a specific product then about 20 minutes after your REM cycle is over, BOOM it's on your Facebook feed? Yeah that's also an algorithm.

You ever say something out loud then it shows up as an ad everywhere you look. YEP YOU GUESSED IT MORE ALGORITHMS BUDDY. 

There’s been a good deal of chatter in recent years about algorithms. This previously esoteric concept has become a household term because algorithms of various sorts are pervading our lives, in often not-so-good ways. There's some useful ones that make our digital experience much better though, for example: Google’s algorithms that determine what sites show up on that all-important first page of search results are closely guarded secrets and the subject of much speculation among search engine optimization experts. Amazon and Netflix use algorithms to make recommendations based on your past viewing or buying selections. The list goes on...and on and on and onnnnnn.

Even before there were digital images and image editing software, graphic artists had an occasional need to extract an arbitrary shape (such as the outline of a human subject) from an image so that it could be placed in other images. In the days of chemical photography, this involved complex darkroom techniques or even painstakingly cutting things out of paper prints with scissors. Imagine fitting that into your schedule these days!