Being a software developer sometimes tends to get pretty mundane. Sure, it can offer plenty of cerebral benchpressing, but it isn’t exactly a life of thrill and adventure.
Which is why the benevolent and venerable road authorities of Bangalore decided to spice up our bland existence with the gift of Outer Ring Road.
What’s in a road, you might ask? Well, Outer Ring Road (affectionately called ORR) is no ordinary road. It’s a vast expanse of fuzzy-laned, uninterrupted tar and asphalt with unrelenting, asphyxiating, typanum-rupturing traffic. And to step the excitement up a notch, the esteemed authorities were considerate enough to skip traffic lights, crossings, footbridges, or basically anything that could diminish the thrill of the experience. So today, you don’t cross ORR, you launch an expedition across it. One ill-planned manuever or careless misstep and you risk the wrath of LateToWorkSedan or BigDaddyBus. Or worst of all, those pesky BikeRats.
But my fellow poor OppressedSoftwareGeeks have risen to the challenge magnificently. We’ve used our analytical minds to design ingenious algorithms to thwart these agents of road rage day after day. Here they are, in descending order of effectiveness / popularity:
1) DDOS: The classic distributed denial of service, more commonly known as ‘talk to the hand’. Outstretch your hand, and confidently walk across like you own the road. Stare down anyone who objects.
2) Chain Rule: Stand end to end to form a human geek chain. The Chain Rule states that given an opportune moment, a sufficiently long geek chain can halt the progress of any number of speeding cars (The optimal chain length has been found to be 6 geeks).
3) Greedy Algorithm: Run across when you see your chance! Dirty and effective, but not recommended. Also potentially fatal.
4) Divide and Conquer: Three or more cooperating geeks moving haphazardly can confuse enough drivers to cause a complete standstill. Success!
5) Travelling Salesman: Pretend to be a travelling salesman selling a detergent or house loan. Cars will hastily drive away from you.
6) Dynamic Programming: Start screaming ‘Optimal Substructure’ and ‘Overlapping Subproblems’ on the roadside. A sympathetic bystander might take pity and help you cross.
7) Hyperloop: Just waiting for Musk to get back to us. Uh, should be anytime about now.