How's that insightful?

A real reference, please, not anecdotes repeated on a few blogs. The unpublished paper, lacking peer-review, you cite does assert some figures from which the author makes an inference from some uncited figures.

In the real world, where research is conducted and papers are peer-reviewed and published:

You'll quickly discover that these mysterious "just can't do it" students are mentioned nowhere in the literature. (The closest thing you could find was that some students have a higher aptitude!) It's a myth, promulgated by people who (inexplicably) have make their ability to program a significant part of their identity.

What a load of nonsense!

I've yet to have a student who simply "didn't get it". No study that I've encountered mentions these "just can't do it" students.

You just want to believe that you're somehow special because you can write computer programs. Odd, as even children can, and often do, successfully teach themselves!

Bigots aren't the victims.

Well, I can see how they'd think they're the victims. That's often the perspective of those on the losing side of history.

You're deeply confused.

Evidence? Because I don't see any.

Social Justice Warrior. It's a term used by bigots to denigrate anyone who thinks that disadvantaged groups should have equal opportunity.

No doubt. The poor personal hygiene alone could cripple them.

I'm glad to see things are finally getting back to normal around here.

It's wrong in principle. As you can see from your own explanations, you don't know how it can be done either. The reason, of course, is that it's a complete absurdity.

Again, it seems that you've confused 'a solution that meets the requirements' with 'the best possible solution'. I'm not sure if you're actually still confused, or just too ashamed to admit that you misread my original post.

By financially and scientifically rewarding, Knuth is referring to the benefits of computer programs to science and industry.

This isn't ambiguous. I'd suspect that you're being intentionally obtuse, but I can't give you that much credit.

You think everything is a skilled craft? I'm sorry, I must simply disagree with you outright as I can't comprehend the confusion of ideas that would provoke such a response. All I can do is direct you to the nearest dictionary. You can write an angry letter to the publisher if you're still having trouble.

I thought I was being rather nice, considering what you've offered here. I had you pegged as a trade-school dropout after your impossibly incompetent reading of the Knuth quote. Just look at your own posts. They are clearly not the product of an educated person!

That you need to make trade-offs, balancing both quantitative and qualitative variables, should indicate to you that the entire concept of a "best possible solution" is absurd. Revisit my earlier posts for more detail. We've been over this already. I can only repeat myself so many times.

All you've told me is that you can produce a solution that meets some requirements. That's not in dispute. Nor is it terribly interesting. We're after the mythical "best possible solution" you've been on about.

On math, science, and art:

Yes, you use math in development, but that does not make programming mathematics any more so than carpentry! Equally, while you may use some of the methods associated with science in programming, that does not make programming a science any more than auto repair, which also employees those same methods.

Both of those are examples of skilled trades. The largest distinctions between those and programming are the cultural assumptions we apply to their practitioners. I suspect that the social advantages afforded computer programmers is what leads to that delusional thinking.

When I refer to programming as an 'art' I mean that in the sense that programming is a skilled craft. From the preface to Knuth's The Art of Computer Programming:

I'm not offering a unique perspective here, but one long-established. It's frustrating to the neopositivists, but they also want to see programming become more like engineering. In that sense, even they acknowledge the nature of computer programming, despite their otherwise delusional thinking.

It's just a game, for fun. I'm going to guess "2-year trade school" given that you claim a "formal background in programming" because I can't see that meaning anything else.

We clearly need to get back on track. The source of this conflict:

You now know that this assertion is complete nonsense. That was my entire point. It's been made. You admit as much with nonsense like this:

Read that again: "altering the target optimal performance" The word "optimal" there loses all meaning. It should read as simply "target performance". There is either an optimal solution or there isn't. Why not just say "the best possible solution is whatever I say it is". It's more honest, and just as convincing!

On science, you give this silliness:

Science is many things. You define science as a body of knowledge. Science can also be defined as a method of inquiry, as a community, and simply to mean 'the study of'. I expect middle-school kids to understand something that basic.

The "science" part of "computer science" is science in 'the study of' sense. As a discipline, it's essentially a branch of mathematics.

You also don't seem to understand what is meant by 'art'. I'm going to guess you're an autodidact. Am I right? I can't imagine that an educated person would make such an absurd statement.

How disappointing. At least you tried. How do you know that your solution is the fastest, lowest memory solution possible? How do you know that your "best practices" are really the "best" and that there aren't better options?

Since you mention it, how do you know that the language or platform selected is capable of producing the optimal solution? You mention using Java a good bit, so you know that you're already adding a lot of overhead and thus very unlikely to produce a mythical "best possible solution" given your performance and memory requirements.

See, there is no such thing as the "best possible solution". What you're describing is an "acceptable solution" given a set of constraints, many of which (like your silly "best practices" which change with incredible frequency) are just folk-wisdom. They're not scientific, mathematical, or objective in any way. Your other constraints (memory and speed) are impossible to meet as you can't tell if there is a faster solution that uses less memory.

Instead of trying to win an argument here, reflect a bit. Particularly on how readability factors in to your above criteria. Are those criteria subjective or objective? Can they be measured? Are you really measuring what you think you're measuring or do your methods merely quantify something you believe to be related? On things like memory and cycles, how do you know that they are as low as possible and that there aren't different approaches that you could use to minimize those?

Further, when you trade memory for speed or speed for readability how do you know that your decision will lead you closer to this alleged "best possible solution"?

Okay, I'll play. What coding standards are necessary to achieve the "best possible solution" for a given problem? How were these determined?

If you'd rather: How can we determine that we've arrived at the "best possible solution"?

Nonsense. Though that silly belief is a big part of the delusion.

There are a lot of factors to consider when writing a computer program. Some (but not all) of those factors can be quantified. How best to balance those is also deeply subjective. For example, is a fast program that uses little memory but is difficult to read and maintain better or worse than a fast program that uses more memory but is easy to read and maintain?

I don't know that I really need to explain this further. It's pretty obvious that there is no such thing as a "best possible solution" to a given programming problem. To believe otherwise is, quite simply, delusional.