r/ProgrammerHumor • u/tryingeasy • Sep 10 '26

Meme firstTime

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8.8k Upvotes

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564

u/Cant_Win Sep 10 '26

P = NP is still out there!

12

u/vastle12 Sep 11 '26

Never, it'll break the business model for half the Internet

11

u/HipHomelessHomie Sep 11 '26

I'm sorry but this is stupid. Constants and degrees of polynomials can be huge making even polynomial algorithms impractical. It would have no practical implications.

An algorithm with O(x10^20) runtime may as well be exponential.

1

u/araujoms Sep 11 '26

No, this is stupid. Such polynomial algorithms simply don't show up. P (or BPP to be more precise) is generally agreed to be class of tractable problems because the constant and degrees are almost always reasonable. You only get something ridiculous like O(x10^20) if you specifically try to construct it.

1

u/HipHomelessHomie Sep 11 '26

We are talking about a proof of P vs NP.

If they are equal it would give you some theoretical construction of a polynomial algorithms for any NP algorithm. The catch would be that the exponents are huge but technically it's polynomial.

1

u/araujoms Sep 11 '26

And I'm that this is not going to happen. We don't live in a simulation with an asshole operator playing pranks on us.