Se preguntarán ¿quién es Edsger Dijkstra?
Bueno, el pibe es el «inventor» si se quiere, de uno de los algoritmos más utilizados para encontrar el camino más corto entre un numero de nodos dado, separados por métricas de diferentes pesos… bla bla bla… los que saben o les interesa algo el tema de redes de datos, sepan que este es el algoritmo de ruteo en el cual se basa el protocolo OSPF.

Leyendo por allí, encontre esto que también planteó el amigo Edsger:

Dijkstra also created what is known as the dining philosophers problem. The problem is as follows: there are five philosophers sitting around a round table. In front of them are five bowls and five chopsticks.

The rules for dining are:

1. Each philosopher thinks for a while, eats for a while and then waits for a while.
2. To eat, the philosopher must hold both his right and left chopsticks.
3. The philosophers communicate only by the lifting and lowering of the chopsticks. (They can’t talk or write)

This problem has many solutions. If all of the philosophers pick up their right chopstick, then no one can pick up their left one. If they all hold their right and wait for the left one to become available, no one will eat. This is called deadlock. If some of them decide to put down their chopstick then the others can eat, but that particular philosopher might never eat. This is called starvation. Another possibility is that all of the philosophers eat, but some might eat more than others. This is call ed lack of fairness. Dijkstra’s point is that one wants to avoid all of these problems in their programs. Some operating systems didn’t and deadlock occurred which the system didn’t crash, but it sat there waiting for resources to become available.

Impresionante no !! Una vision simple, de muchos de los problemas actuales…