Some mental lessons from brute-force,
The first time I implemented a brute-force algorithm was probably when I was around 14; it’s been more than 10 years at this point. And interestingly, I had this random thought in my head that we tend to look down on brute-force in computer science in a lot of scenarios, because it’s not efficient, especially if you have a combinatorial explosion situation for the domain problem you’re working at. But in reality, in real-life circumstances, is brute-force really that bad? Life is complex in nature, I’m not denying that. But I’ve seen firsthand how many individuals have achieved their goals in life by sheer brute force. And I think there’s a deep lesson in that: While everybody keeps telling you to work smarter, be more productive, use that new workflow to be faster, etc. there’s a whole different kind of game to be played by just brute-forcing things in life.