huh. Interesting background. Thanks for sharing.

Regarding your remark "[...] because second shelf algorithms now rival or beat the top shelf ones [...]". That is honestly something I would never have believed back in the 2000s, Windows XP era:

I thought we needed more than the classic mathematical operations and if/else for an operating system that drives the modern world like it had been envisioned by sci-fi in the past 100 years.

That turned out to be wrong: Your modern android with a couple of simple apps is everything a man from 1900 might ever conceivably want from technology.

And it is all if/else/while and mathematical operations.

It turned out you just needed enough of these, to get everything working nicely.

Watching in awe. Watching in awe.