Came here to say the same. I remember playing around with this back in the day, but using two candles instead of the sensor bar. Yes, it works. No, it’s not a good idea to hold candles that close to your hair.
Thanks for your work and dedication on this problem domain, Geoffrey! I’ve used optaplanner in the past on several projects and will certainly use Timefold for future projects. This sort of
constrain solver is an invaluable tool when you find yourself in the problem space and definitely worth the learning curve.
I haven’t seen it in the comments yet, but you can watch Abelson and Sussman teaching the material from this book from recorded lectures in 1986.
I still find their description of how to create and group abstractions in various layers to be useful personally and as a mentor. (In the videos, lesson 3A, 1:07:55)
Nifty! I worked very briefly about 12 years ago on a similar concept that was live at chicago.com. Things didn’t work out with it for various reasons but while it was up I found it quite useful. Some of the original team is still in Chigaco and building stuff. Best of luck shipping it!
Depending on how much structure you want to extract before passing the pdf contents to the next step in your pipeline, this paper[1] might be helpful in surfacing more options. It's a review/benchmark of numerous tools applied to the information extraction of academic documents. I haven't been through to evaluate the solutions they examined, but it's how I discovered GROBID and IMO lays out the strengths of each approach clearly.
Similar cross of art, low power/resilient tech, and sailing I saw at strange loop last year. Non-standard tech talk for sure, but fit right in at that conference: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T3u7bGgVspM
:facepalm: no wonder it rang a bell… I thought, “I wonder if these are the same folks” and even looked at their route map but somehow missed that key detail. Appreciate the graceful response :)
Another take on non-linear explorational programming is Black, which is an extension of scheme. Different motivations, but you might find something interesting there. How I was exposed to it: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=SrKj4hYic5A