Test driven development would take on a new meaning, with the programmer a writing collection of tests and letting the computer find the shortest program that makes them pass.
Ask HN: P=NP, what do you do?
21–30 of 70 posts
Re: Ask HN: P=NP, what do you do?
#22I'd write a kick-ass regular expression engine.
Re: Ask HN: P=NP, what do you do?
#23Build a superhuman intelligence (duh).
Re: Ask HN: P=NP, what do you do?
#24I wondered along these lines recently. A relative is getting caught up in the "water-car", "Brown's Gas", Hydrogen internet scam.. Where you convert water to 2H2 + O2 and burn that to power the car, house, etc for "free".
What would you do if it actually worked? How would you convince people? Where would you share it?
Re: Ask HN: P=NP, what do you do?
#25Test driven development would take on a new meaning, with the programmer a writing collection of tests and letting the computer find the shortest program that makes them pass.
Wouldn't writing a complete test suite take equivalent effort to writing the program in the first place? I mean, wouldn't they require the same amount of information? Then, to simplify the task of writing test suites, you might want to design a programming language that compiles into test suites, but would you use your program-writing program to write the program that describes the test suite? And also, who watches the watchers?
Re: Ask HN: P=NP, what do you do?
#261) Cash in your discovery for US $1 million [0].
2) Fund your own disruptive startup incubator, a la YCombinator (using the publicity from your discovery to attract hoards of scrappy geniuses).
2.5) Optionally, focus on startups that monetize P=NP - again, for publicity reasons (as well being able to leverage your own expertise in evaluating biz ideas).
3) Profit!
(profferred tongue in cheek, of course - it's not very private :)
Re: Ask HN: P=NP, what do you do?
#27solve protein folding, become evil megalomaniac with doomsday virus.
Re: Ask HN: P=NP, what do you do?
#28Test driven development would take on a new meaning, with the programmer a writing collection of tests and letting the computer find the shortest program that makes them pass.
Wouldn't writing a complete test suite take equivalent effort to writing the program in the first place? I mean, wouldn't they require the same amount of information? Then, to simplify the task of writing test suites, you might want to design a programming language that compiles into test suites, but would you use your program-writing program to write the program that describes the test suite? And also, who watches t…
It's turtles. Turtles I say. Turtles all the way down!
Re: Ask HN: P=NP, what do you do?
#29Two monitors at the same time, friend.
In seriousness, I'd be careful because as others have pointed out, some crypto systems would be vulnerable.
Re: Ask HN: P=NP, what do you do?
#30solve protein folding, become evil megalomaniac with doomsday virus.
I thought protein folding was harder than NP.
IIRC, calculating the free energy of a molecule is in #P (count the number of solutions to a problem in NP), and you still need to step it through time or otherwise deal with the actual folding bit.
I might be remembering incorrectly though.
Edit: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sharp-P-complete Also: whoops - looks like structure prediction can be done with high accuracy in NP - just don't try to animate it :)