Computer Science Student Over-Engineers Supermarket Floor Sweeping with Simulated Annealing Algorithm
By
thunderbong
Toasted golden, schmeared with insight. Top of the rack.
Summary
A Computer Science student working a minimum wage job sweeping floors at Albert Heijn supermarket couldn't resist optimizing the task. Instead of simply sweeping, they turned the floor plan into a grid graph, built a visual editor, and wrote a C++ path optimizer using simulated annealing. The article explores how this over-engineering approach went spectacularly wrong and led to the realization that algorithms optimizing for the wrong things can make everyone miserable. It's a personal reflection on the pitfalls of applying technical solutions to simple problems and the disconnect between academic optimization and practical reality.
Key quotes
· 4 pulledI'm a Computer Science student, with a problem: I can't stop trying to optimize things that (probably) don't need optimizing.
I turned the supermarket floor plan into a grid graph, built a visual editor and wrote a C++ path optimizer using simulated annealing.
But before we dive into how this went spectacularly wrong, and how this made me realize how this makes everyone miserable...
An experiment involving sweeping floors, simulated annealing, and why algorithms that optimize for the wrong thing ruin your life.
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